Industrial Vehicles

While personal vehicles make up the largest part of the discussion when it comes to vehicles and the environment, industrial vehicles are certainly responsible for a large part of our monthly emissions of greenhouse gases. Whether we are talking the semi trailers that are used to ship pieces of equipment from delivering items to Kitsilano real estate shipping to retail stores or airplanes, all industrial vehicles require a lot of fuel in order to conduct their business.

In this article, we are going to take a look at some of the news being made when it comes to industrial vehicles and the environment. Because of the high energy consumption of these vehicles, manufacturers have had a hard time switching to more eco-friendly models.

Ford and the Transit Connect

Ford is currently working on an introduction to North America of their Transit Connect model. This commercial van is ideal for small businesses and those which run fleets for repair jobs. The two back barn doors provide ideal access to the spacious interior, where an automatic strapping machine can easily fit alongside cable cutters, electrical sleeves, and so on.

The Transit Connect has been available on the European market since 2007, and Ford does not plan to produce the vehicle in North America until 2010. When that does occur, businesses can look forward to a hybrid model which runs on an impressive 25 miles for every gallon of fuel consumed. In addition, the commercial model includes an in dash computer with Internet access. Whether or not you can load up some group collaboration software from the driver's seat is still unknown!

Taxes and the United Kingdom

As the Transit Connect makes its way east to west over the Atlantic, one can't help but wonder what other UK adaptations will find a foothold in the North American markets. Currently, environmental legislation is causing many commercial fleets to rethink their fueling strategy in the Old Country. Trailers used to carrying things like shrink sleeves for packaging and other shipping vehicles are increasingly switching to clean fuel choices such as compressed natural gas.

Fleet managers are making these decisions as vehicle taxes are now directly related to emissions, making more environmentally sound industrial vehicles less costly as well. Fleets that run vehicles on cleaner fuels improve their bottom line, and you can expect this legislation to be closely looked at by American and Canadian administrations in the near future.

City Transit Time Warp?

For many of the world's largest cities, the switch to more environmentally friendly public transportation fleets was not hard to make. Less than a century ago, all city vehicles ran on the electric lines, and it looks like that's the way of the bus in the future. Cables wrapped in heat resistant tape connect buses in Vancouver and Toronto to power lines over head, and electric power cuts the operating costs of these systems right down. Look for many more cities to get back to the days of electric transport in the near future!