Environmental services company Urbaser, which is contracted to Barcelona City Council to provide street cleaning services, is operating a fleet of 51 EVs.

The EV fleet includes 22 Fiat Ducattos and 18 Piaggio Porter vans, which have been bought outright, whilst its remaining vehicles are run on either compressed natural gas (CNG) or biodiesel.

Joan Hinojo, general manager of CircControl, says: “They’ve compared the cost of electricity to operate the fleet against what they would have to pay for fuel and it’s three times less, while they’re also spending 30% less on service, maintenance and repairs.”

Meanwhile, the cost of purchasing the EVs is between two to three times the price of a conventional vehicle and the company says it will be eight years before it will be able to achieve any return on its investment.

Each EV travels on average 75km per day and has a designated parking bay with a corresponding RFID (radio frequency identification) card to operate the charging point.

Urbaser employs Evolt’s SCADA software to manage the energy supply to prevent any power surges and log each vehicle’s energy consumption during charging.

A total charge time per kilowatt is calculated, so that running costs of each individual vehicle can be analysed and any potential faults, such as batteries only partially charging, can be easily identified.