BT Ask Vauxhall to Build More EV Vans in the UK for Engineers

Telecoms giant BT is reportedly in talks with Vauxhall in the hope of encouraging the car manufacturer to ramp-up production of their electric vehicles and move more of the construction line into the UK. The aim is to support their goal of converting Openreach’s entire fleet of engineering vans to EVs by 2030.

At present BT is investing £15bn to ensure that 25 million UK premises are covered by Openreach’s new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network by December 2026. But alongside that, they’re also in the process of converting their 27,000 strong fleet of Openreach engineering vehicles to electric, which forms part of the group’s wider Net Zero climate targets.

The operator has already conducted trials with a number of different EVs, such as various models from Renault (here) and Vauxhall (here). In terms of the latter company, BT has already purchased 270 Vivaro-e vans and 9 Corsa-e cars (pictured – top) from Vauxhall (total of 279) and, by the sounds of it, they’re preparing to make a much bigger order.

According to the Telegraph (Paywall), most of BT’s initial trial purchase have been imported from France, and they’d prefer to “buy British” by encouraging Vauxhall to shift production of their Vivaro-e to the manufacturing plant in Luton (this site currently builds the ICE version of the Vivaro). In return, they’d no doubt receive quite a big order. BT is Vauxhall’s biggest Vivaro customer.

However, Vauxhall also wants the UK government to open up their Automotive Transformation Fund (ATF) to help support the plans for an expansion of UK EV production.

Paul Willcox, MD of Vauxhall Motors, said:

“Vauxhall proudly builds the Vivaro van at our plant in Luton and soon to bring production of our all-electric Combo-e van to Ellesmere Port. BT Openreach has already ordered 270 all-electric Vauxhall Vivaro-e from us and we are in discussion with them for supply of further electric vans.

We support the work of the electric vehicle fleet accelerator group in buying British-built electric vans and are keen to work with both them and the UK government on how we can bring the electric Vivaro-e production to our Luton plant.”

The news offers further evidence that Openreach have been pleased by the performance of their trial EVs from Vauxhall, which isn’t too much of a surprise. The car manufacturer has a long history of working closely with Openreach (most of their vans come from the same company) and will have tailored the product to their needs.

We should point out that, at present, BT’s EV upgrade plan doesn’t include specialist vehicles and heavy equipment (e.g. hoists/cherry-pickers, ditch witches etc.). One reason for that is the lack of affordable EV alternatives, but this may well change over the next decade.