Nottingham Electric Vehicle Services (NEVS) opened in October 2020 which is based at our Eastcroft depot in the city centre.
NEVS has been developed to support and encourage the growing number of ULEVs coming to Nottingham and around the UK. NEVS acts as an exemplar to the current service centres in Nottingham on the changes they can make to be able to cater for the surge in electric vehicles appearing on our roads. Over the last three years, the number of ULEVs on our roads has grown by more than 200%. This is expected to grow further with the removal of benefit in kind for battery electric vehicles in April 2020.
Although electric vehicles (EVs) have a lot in common with internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, servicing an EV is not as complicated compared to an ICE vehicle. EVs present a large simplification in the drive train. Lacking all the moving parts of an ICE vehicle’s engine, an EV just has the battery. Furthermore, with an EV’s regenerative braking, the brake pads are used far less than with an ICE vehicle, meaning they will have a much longer life. However, the high voltage nature of these vehicles means that mechanics must be trained in high voltage maintenance and various safety measures should be in place in the garage.
There will be a local apprenticeship role within NEVS who will be trained on electric vehicles, as well as all our current light vehicle maintenance staff being upskilled to deal with the new processes of electric vehicles.
NEVS is used by our own electric fleet. With 30% of our own fleet being electric, this gives us a facility to maintain our vehicles locally, keeping our up time high and costs low.
NEVS is another step along our path to make Nottingham a carbon neutral city by 2028.
