Progress for Sandy Town’s Net Zero Journey with ET Lander.
Purchasing the fully electric ET Lander utility vehicle was the first major step in Sandy Town Council’s Environmental Plan.
Committed to reducing carbon emissions before 2030, Sandy Town Council thought they should be moving to an electric vehicle to replace a diesel truck which was coming to the end of its life. Staff and councillors took delivery of the Etesia ET Lander near the end of 2022, following several months of assessment and demonstrations of a range of options.
JOANNA HEWITT
Commented…
“One of the main things for us, being a rural market town, is that our whole estate is very varied. Anything we buy has to be able to travel on the A1 – a major Trunk road. We also have a market town environment, so we’ve got the market square, we’ve got local roads, we have parks, we have a football recreation ground.
We have an old cemetery that it has to be able to navigate. And then, of course, we have rural land around us. We’re very lucky being on the Greensand Ridge: we have woodland, but the Ridge, as the word denotes, is very steep and hilly. So it’s a very rugged terrain around the outside of the town – anything we choose has to be able to cope and be an all-terrain vehicle.”
MARTIN PETTITT
Commented…
“We had demonstrations in different parts of the town and members of the outdoor team who would be using the vehicle were equally impressed with what they saw.
It’s supporting the use of traditional diesel vehicles, but because of its narrower wheelbase and electronic nature we’re able to manoeuvre more easily around the cemetery and also to go to places in the town, peripheral woodlands and so on, to do some work there, which the previous vehicles that we had just didn’t allow.”
After making its debut in 2021, the Etesia ET Lander has taken the industry by storm. 100% electric, spacious, well-equipped and user-friendly, it’s built on a robust chassis and has an array of options including a three-way tipper bed with dual control from the fully fitted two-seater cab or by remote control when outside the vehicle.
The new models are fully N1 homologation compliant, meaning that the Etesia ET Lander is fully road-legal, though is just as happy off-road. These upgraded models also feature lithium-ion batteries, which ensure that the range of the Etesia ET Lander will extend to 100km and have a charger system compatible with a standard type 2EV car charger.
JOANNA HEWITT
Commented…
“We’ve had it about ten months now, and when you see the grounds team out in the machine, they look proud to be driving around in an electric vehicle.
We used it to help with the Christmas lights event last year, moving pieces of kit around. Residents came up and spoke to us – they’d seen it around town and they wanted to know what it was. They didn’t know it was an all-electric vehicle. So it’s been quite a talking point in the town as well, to help promote the environmental plans and processes for the town, and I would highly recommend it to other town councils. It’s efficient, it’s clean and it does what you need it to do.”
MARTIN PETTITT
Commented…
“Some of us in Sandy had had previous contact with RT Machinery through a sports association in acquiring a small electric vehicle with them and it seemed appropriate to include RT Machinery as part of the tendering process for our first electric vehicle. It was an extremely straightforward process.
“I would certainly think that most forward-thinking town councils and parish councils ought to be looking, as part of their environmental plan going forward, to introduce the use of electric vehicles and that RT Machinery and Etesia products are definitely something that they should be looking at.”
