The two vehicles are an all-electric Altea XL Electric Ecomotive and a plug-in hybrid Leon TwinDrive. Endesa has handed them over to eight of its employees in Catalonia who will test them for a year until December 2013 as part of the company’s city fleet. Each driver will have possession of the vehicle for three months before handing it on to another of the group. The drivers have been selected from the Catalan districts of Baix Llobregat, Maresme, Vallès Occidental and Vallès Oriental.
The official hand-over ceremony was held in front of Endesa’s headquarters in Barcelona during which Ramón Paredes, the Vice-President for Governmental and Institutional Relations for SEAT and the Volkswagen Group in Spain, highlighted the leadership shown by the two companies within the electric motoring sector. He also pointed out that Endesa was going to be the first company in Spain to include two SEAT electric vehicles in its corporate fleet.
“SEAT and Endesa share a common objective of promoting electric vehicles” Paredes said. “These tests signify another step towards achieving that objective. Working together will provide us with a professional point of view which will contribute to the better development of our models.”
Endesa was also involved with the first stage of SEAT’s loan of electric vehicles (EV’s) to companies and institutions, when the vehicles initial acceptance and adaptation by drivers was assessed. The second stage will analyse the changes in driving habits compared to conventional vehicles. SEAT will assess the data collected from these trials before proceeding to mass production.
The drivers will commit themselves to providing relevant information about their driving experience in the vehicles. They must cover a minimum number of kilometres per day, install charging facilities at their normal place of residence and replace their own vehicle with the electric car. Driving zones will consist of urban, interurban and district areas determined according to distance and geographical area. Drivers in the urban area must drive at least 400km per month, increasing to 600km in the interurban area and 900km in the district zone.
SEAT and Endesa are promotion partners in the Live platform, a project which encourages the use of EV’s in Barcelona with the aim of promoting the city as an innovation centre for electric motoring. The two companies also collaborated at the Smart City Expo Congress also held in Barcelona a few weeks ago.
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