A NORTH-EAST firm is helping drive the uptake of electric vehicles in Germany.

Smith Electric Vehicles (SEV), part of the Tanfield group, based in Washington, Wearside, is to provide ten electric vans to Ford of Europe for German trials.

Smith is supplying ten Edison vans to Ford, which is one of the partners in the colognE-mobil project in Cologne, launched yesterday.

The first phase of the project will examine the potential benefits of electric commercial vehicles in Cologne, then forecast how they could impact on Germany’s plans to deploy a million zeroemission vehicles by 2020.

For the project, Smith will build seven Edison panel vans for delivery service companies, two Edison minibuses for passenger shuttle services and one Edison chassis cab for municipal use in the city of Cologne.

Kevin Harkin, sales director for SEV, said: “We are delighted to be supporting Ford of Europe in this project.

“We believe that commercial electric vehicles have a major role to play in lowcarbon transport and are confident this research project will reach the same conclusions.”

The Smith Edison is an electric version of the Ford Transit van.

Designed for urban operations, the vehicle delivers a range of up to 100 miles on a full charge and a top speed of 50mph.

Smith has produced Edison in collaboration with Ford since 2007.