Scottish fire & rescue services switching to electric cars

The Scottish Fire & Rescue Service (SFRS) has ordered 45 Renault Zoe. The electric cars will be used throughout Scotland as the company’s general pool vehicles, each covering at least 10,000 miles per year.

SFRS, claims to be the world’s fourth-largest fire and rescue service and says it will use the zero-emissions Zoe cars as general pool vehicles, meaning they will be used by uniformed staff, office employees and management to interact with the public in non-emergency situations.

The electric vehicle fleet is to spread across the whole of Scotland, including all major cities as well as Orkney and the Shetland Islands. The Renault Zoe EVs are SFRS’s first pure electric vehicles (in a fleet of nearly 1,800 vehicles), and SFRS is committed to moving to an entirely electric fleet.

The Renault Zoes replace ICEs and now account for nearly a quarter of SFRS’s pool car fleet. They will be based at strategic station locations throughout the country, with SFRS installing up to six charging points at each site. Additional charging will be carried out via ChargePlace Scotland, the government-supported public EV charging network.

Scott Roberts, Fleet Manager, Scottish Fire & Rescue Service, said the switch to all-electric vehicles is “a major step in our future direction and while we have previously adopted hybrid technology with a handful of vehicles, they felt more like a box-ticking exercise and never really worked on a practical or financial basis”. He added that the change-over had worked so well, “that we’ll be replacing all our pool cars with the Renault Zoe in due course,” and also the electric van Kangoo Z.E. may be introduced in future.

In addition to the Zoe electric car, the Renault range of electric vehicles encompasses the Twizy quad, the Kangoo Z.E. 33 Van and the New Master Z.E. Van.

renault.co.uk (press information)