DELIVER US FROM DIESEL

There's lots of clamour these days for companies to up sustainability and reduce pesky overheads...

- TOM FORD

Seems a bit of a mismatch here. On the one hand, you have the Ford e-Transit. A name so familiar it's become embedded in the national psyche. As affectionately regarded as a family Labrador, billions of miles driven in a myriad of shapes and sizes, as aerodynamic as a bouncy castle. OK, so it's got an extra E in the name and it doesn't cough into life with the clatter of dieselly valves, but this is familiar, comforting stuff. It doesn't even look that much different from what we're used to.

On the other hand, you have the VW ID.Buzz Cargo, the commercial variant - panel van with a separate cab - of the on-trend ID.Buzz. Smaller, cooler, designed from the outset as an electric vehicle. So this is big commercial versus something more chic, pure workhorse versus a vehicle that represents your business in a more stylish manner. But which is the better van? It's harder to work out than you might think.

For a start, the usefulness of a van is entirely dependent on your business and your use case, doubly so for an electric version. Regular or short-ish routes and the ability to charge from a hub or home that takes advantage of cheap rates? An electric van might be just the thing. Let's face it, no electric vans are currently at the stage where they can be filled with half a tonne of hardcore and gambol to a site 250 miles away towing a generator. But what about someone who does multi-drop urban deliveries and ends up back at a depot within good time? For whom payload isn't as important as load volume. No ULEZ restriction, silent and locally emission-free, with an easy drive and lots of telematics to manage both time and money. Next-day delivery, you have a lot to answer for.