Renault EZ-FLEX is Postman Pat’s ELECTRIC future

The Renault EZ-FLEX is Renault’s plan for future delivery vehicles in urban areas, offering a full electric powertrain, compact size and good cargo are. And it looks like Postman Pat’s van.

With all the hoo-ha about banning ICE cars from city centres to cut emissions, the fact that commercial vehicles are probably the biggest problem is often overlooked.

But with us all spending half our lives online grabbing goodies from Amazon and eBay, parcel deliveries in cities is soaring and so too are the number of, often heavily polluting, delivery vehicles.

But Renault has a plan to address that, and looks like it’s been inspired by Postman Pat to create the perfect electric delivery van – the Renault EZ-FLEX.

The EZ-FLEX comes with an electric powertrain good for a 62-mile range, which doesn’t sound much but is apparently more than twice the average 30 miles a delivery van in cities does in a day. Which probably tells you all you need to know about how slow city traffic really is.

It’s also just four metres long, has a  4.5 metre turning circle (which makes a Black Cab look cumbersome) and can carry three cubic metres of parcels – about the same as a Transit Connect. 

Renault plan to lend an EZ-FLEX to a dozen companies in Europe to test its performance and practicality, complete with sensors which will track the van’s location, its range and speed and the frequency of cargo bay use.

All of which will help Renault tweak the EZ-FLEX to perfection.