Electric vehicle maker Tanfield will receive £1.6 million funding to develop and trial vehicles from the Government’s Technology Strategy Board.

Bombed-out electric vehicle maker Tanfield will receive £1.6 million funding to develop and trial vehicles from the Government’s Technology Strategy Board.
 
As part of the Transport Secretary Lord Adonis’s Ultra Low Carbon Vehicle Demonstrator Programme, the AIM-listed Tanfield will build and test 16 vehicles, including five people carriers and one executive minibus with automotive giant Ford. Tanfield will also work with fully listed Manganese Bronze to provide ten electric taxis.

Chief executive officer Darren Kell says the project funding helps move the company into new markets. ‘This funding will support our plans to transfer leading edge electric vehicle technology from our vans and trucks into passenger vehicles.’
 
‘Tanfield is already acknowledged as the leader in electric vehicles that move goods. This enables us to address the market for electric vehicles that move people.’
 
The government is putting £25million into the programme, which will involve around 340 cars driving on UK roads in the next six to eighteen months. The aim is to test the technology and give motorists the opportunity to provide feedback to the manufacturers.

Furthermore the company has also been confirmed as part of another government scheme, the Low Carbon Vehicle Procurement Programme, which will provide subsidies for certain public sector bodies to buy electric and low carbon vans. Tanfield says it will be a ‘key supplier’ in this project, providing an as-yet unknonwn number of its Smith Edison vehicles as part of the 150-van first phase and perhaps more if the scheme is expanded as planned.