As you may well be aware, GEN as a organisation is all about climate change, low energy and green initiatives. We work hard to ensure that our operations have minimal impacts on the environment and our fleet is no exception. In 2014 we selected the Vauxhall Ampera (aka Chevrolet Volt) for our fleet as this promised up to 235mpg and a 50 mile electric only range. Unfortunately during the following years we never managed to reach 50 miles electric range and our average MPG was more around 40 which was unfortunate. We found the servicing and support from Vauxhall to be far less than acceptable and a number of vehicles had long term issues such as heating not working, centre console crashes, and probably the worst SAT-NAV ever created that was next to impossible to use. We didn't just try one dealer but in fact we tried several including, Listers in Leicester and lookers in Birmingham. Our local dealer in Nottingham was 'not equipped' to service our Ampera's. When we were left without vehicles for extended periods and had to resort to contract hire, vauxhall's response was that 'they do not offer compensation'. Regardless of this we struggled on for the remainder of the lease and we very pleased to be handing them back at the end. 

The Toyota Prius Plug-in for 2017 promises a range of 25 miles and a petrol economy of 55mpg. We did in fact test this and found that a range of 20 miles was more than achievable and indeed motorway driving yielded a fairly even consumption of 50mpg. Some may remember that we selected the 2010 Toyota Prius as our fleet before the Ampera and had no complaints at all as both reliability and service were exemplary.

The new Toyota vehicles should be delivered at some point this week. 

I suspect that in 2020 We'll let you know how it went and what's next... Hopefully full electric or hydrogen fuel cell will be out next direction. 

I'm sure after a couple of months we'll take the time to do a real world review of the new Prius and post on the blog.