British Electric Truck Maker Sets Up Company To Build Cargo Trucks In The U.S.

By John O'Dell, Senior Editor

Tanfield Group, whose Smith Electric vehicles subsidiary builds and markets several battery-electric delivery trucks in Europe, has incorporated a U.S. company in advance of launching a factory to build its trucks here as well.

Smith makes the Newton (right), a large covered cargo truck; the Edison, which can be configured as a panel van, open bed truck or minibus, and the Amphere, a small van based on the Ford Transit van.

A plan to launch U.S. sales with a second Ford-based truck, the Faraday, was announced last year before the global economic meltdown began and the auto industry began imploding.  It apparently has been abandoned, or delayed, as Ford concentrates its efforts of stabilizing its core passenger vehicle business.

Tanfield said Smith's first U.S. truck now will be the much larger Newton. 

The British company told Green Car Advisor more than a year ago that it intended to begin selling its vehicles in the U.S.

The company believes there's huge potential here as pressure increases at the local, state and federal levels for trucking companies to reduce their carbon footprint and cut exhaust-borne air pollution.

"This is where environmentally friendly trucks can make a big difference in helping clean the air," company spokesman Dan Jenkins said of Smith's concentration on the short-haul, intra-city market where big diesel delivery trucks make multiple stops and can spend hours each day idling and spewing soot and other pollutants.

Electric trucks could eliminate noise and tons of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

The U.S. market for Class 5, 6 and 7 intra-city delivery trucks (15,000- to 25,000-pound payloads) is about 200,000 a year when the economy is functioning well and Smith is aiming for an initial 5-percent market share, or 10,000 trucks a year.

Tanfield said it would operate here through a privately owned company, Smith Electric Vehicles US Corp., in which it will hold a 49 percent interest.

It hopes to raise $10 million in equity by selling the remaining 51 percent stake to U.S. investors.

Keeping the majority stake in American hands would make the company eligible for various state and federal incentives for electric vehicle manufacturers.

The U.S. company would license Tanfield's technology for the Smith trucks.

The base Newton truck is powered by four sodium nickel chloride battery packs from Zebra that are half the size and weight as comparable lead acid batteries and deliver twice the power. Smith provides an option of up to six of the 278-volt batteries for buyers who need maximum payload and range.

The direct-drive electric power train features a proprietary 120-kilowatt induction motor and has four moving parts, versus about 1,000 in a comparably sized diesel system.

Tanfield said that after launching the Newton, Smith US would introduce other trucks in its lineup to the American market.

They presumably would include the Amphere (left), based off the Transit Connect small van that has been a best-seller for Ford in Europe and that the automaker is introducing here next year as a conventionally powered commercial vehicle.

Tanfield said that Smith US already is discussing possible U.S. factory locations with officials in two states, but did not specify which. The factory location would depend largely on the incentives a state is willing to provide the company said.

Smith already has a factory in California, in the city of Fresno, but capacity is only 1,000 trucks a year and Smith has said it wants a larger, dedicated facility.

Electric delivery trucks make sense on a number of levels, and while their batteries and drive systems are too large to transfer directly to the passenger vehicle segment, work done improving battery and electric motor and control systems reliability and performance on large trucks can only benefit the nation's nascent electric car business, so we wish Smith U.S. all the best.

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John O'Dell February 6, 2009, 4:43 PM

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Emissions, Plug-ins and Electric, Smith

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Electric Delivery Trucks, Smith Electric Vehicles, Tanfield Group