Clean green ice cream machines

Plymouth City Council has installed five electric chargers at key points on Hoe Road so that ice cream vans can run on clean, green electricity rather than chugging out fumes from their engines.

It means that the ice cream sellers who have concessions there not only save on fuel costs – as running freezers on their engines all day is expensive, but it also cuts the amount of fumes coming out of the exhaust – not a nice combination with your cone.

The project has been warmly welcomed by the sellers, especially as the Council installed chargers that meant that some sellers could convert their vehicles with transformers rather than fork out around £150,000 for a new van.

Cabinet member for community safety, Councillor Sally Haydon instigated the idea and the Council’s street trading team worked with the vendors and liaised with contractors to make it happen. The Council employed a company called Kerbo Charge to install the cables and infrastructure – the first time the company has operated in the city. Metpow provided the submetering of energy use so that the Council can remotely monitor carbon emissions as well as charge for the energy used.