West Middlesex University Hospital has taken on an electric Nissan Leaf through the AlphaElectric scheme, cutting taxi fares by 40%.

With the hospital’s taxi fare bill being a substantial part of their employees travel expenses in 2013, West Middlesex Hospital needed to significantly reduce the cost and environmental impact of their employee travel. 

Therapy employees now use the electric pool car instead of taxis whenever possible, removing the need to administer fuel cards or garage receipts.   

Andy Finlay, performance and operations manager at the Trust said: “It's a win-win for us on cost and the environment.”

“Alphabet helped us to solve this problem by coming up with the car and the insurance. Their account manager also gave us all the information we needed to write the terms and conditions for the car’s users.

"The more we save on expenditure, the more we can put into front line services. The saving we make with the pool car could equate to half a nurse's salary in the first year.

"A lot of NHS organisations today are scratching their heads over their carbon footprint. They know they need to shrink emissions but they don't know how to. This shows what can be done. Assuming that the pool car arrangement performs as expected, the Trust is likely to extend its use of pooled EVs in future”, added Finlay.

David Bushnell, e-mobility consultant at Alphabet added; “Often companies shy away from EVs due to obstacles around cost and infrastructure; however, with the right advice and support, these obstacles can be easily overcome. Alphabet’s AlphaElectric consultancy service is designed to help customers integrate EVs in to their fleet, and that’s exactly what we did with West Middlesex University Hospital. We worked with them to understand their eMobility needs and developed a customised solution to meet their requirements.”