West Midlands ambulance trust set to ‘politely decline’ offer of more electric vehicles next year

West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) already has some 74 battery-powered vehicles in its fleet, including 18 emergency ambulances in urban areas.

A meeting of the WMAS University NHS Foundation Trust board heard that eight more EVs are on their way this year, with another 16 ordered for 2026-27 as part of a drive to net zero carbon emissions.

But Karen Rutter, the WMAS director of finance, told her colleagues they need to look at how effective the electric vehicles are.

“We have had an offer from NHS England to say ‘can we do any more next year’,” she told her colleagues. “I haven’t really pushed that.

“We’re probably going to politely decline that because we want to have a look at how effective they are, whether we are having any issues.

“I think that’s probably the right thing to do.”

WMAS serves a population of six million people in Shropshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Coventry, Birmingham and the Black Country.

But a paper presented to the board meeting on its fleet strategy reported that current technology is still in its infancy in some of the categories of vehicles in operation.

“A good example of this is front line emergency ambulances largely due to their weight and electrical power requirements for ancillary items,” the fleet strategy reads.

WMAS introduced the first fully electric frontline emergency ambulance in 2020.

The report noted that “four years into operation, this asset has proved that an emergency ambulance can be operated on a fully electric platform in a tightly controlled urban environment, however range, access to auxiliary power, reliability and recharging times remain a challenge”.

“In its later years there as been a decline in reliability and increase in maintenance costs, a matter which is being closely monitored.

“It is important the main vehicle manufacturers offering of light commercial vehicles, with adequate range/weight capacity and conversion capability, are brought to market in the following decade.”

The report added that four-ton vehicles are not “seeing the amount of focus from vehicle manufacturers in developing zero emission platforms” and that “this is partly due to the volume market being the 3.5-ton and under where there are more options”.

“At the time of preparing this document there is only one viable base vehicle to build an emergency ambulance on, the Ford Transit – it is however limited to 70mph and has a range of 100 miles maximum.

“As part of a NHS-led initiative, some of these vehicles will be implemented into operation to provide a real-world trial of the technology into Erdington and Sandwell Hubs.

“This would be a challenging implementation into some of the more rural hubs given the daily shift mileage and distances involved.

“The team is keeping a close eye on what happens with category B driving license, drivers with this type of license can drive up to 3.5-ton weight vehicles currently, there is work ongoing to increase this to 4,250kgs – this may result in more manufacturers offering zero emission platforms that can be considered for ambulance conversion.”