IN Brief:
- H E Services tested two- and four-seat electric carts at its Strood depot.
- Integrated roof-mounted solar panels supplement conventional charging while the vehicles are exposed to daylight.
- The trial examines whether compact electric personnel transport can reduce reliance on larger vehicles around controlled sites.
H E Services (Plant Hire) has trialled solar-assisted electric carts at its Strood depot, assessing whether compact vehicles can provide a practical alternative for routine staff movements around construction and plant-hire sites. The two- and four-seat vehicles were supplied by EVision Electric Vehicles and use integrated roof-mounted solar panels to supplement battery charging during daylight operation.
The trial focused on short-distance personnel transport rather than replacing excavators, pickups, vans, or other working vehicles. H E Services used the carts around its Kent operation to move staff between areas of the site, where repeated journeys can otherwise involve walking or the use of larger vehicles carrying little or no load.
Mark Kirchner, area manager at H E Services, said the carts provided an “efficient and safe way of getting around the construction site”. He also reported a reduction in carbon emissions during the trial, although H E Services has not published mileage, charging, energy-consumption, or emissions data that would allow the scale of any saving to be independently quantified.
EVision currently offers both two- and four-seat versions with a 14.4kWh usable battery specification, conventional charger, and roof-mounted solar panel. The supplier says solar generation tops up the battery whenever daylight is available, extending operating time between plug-in charges rather than replacing mains charging altogether.
That distinction matters on working sites because the amount of useful solar energy available from a vehicle roof is limited by its area, orientation, weather, and the length of time the cart remains outdoors. A vehicle operating continuously through a long shift will continue to depend heavily on stored battery energy, while a cart used intermittently by supervisors, visitors, logistics teams, or site management may spend enough time stationary for solar input to make a more useful contribution.
The stronger case for the vehicles may therefore be based on size and duty rather than solar generation alone. Large construction projects can involve substantial distances between compounds, parking, welfare facilities, stores, site offices, and active work areas, creating journeys that are inconvenient on foot but do not justify sending a van or pickup. A small electric cart occupies less space, produces no tailpipe emissions at the point of use, and creates relatively little noise around office and welfare areas.
That does not make the vehicle universally suitable for construction. Active sites include uneven surfaces, temporary haul roads, steep gradients, delivery traffic, pedestrians, heavy plant, and changing work zones, while a lightweight cart provides neither the payload nor protection expected from more substantial utility vehicles. Its operating area therefore has to be deliberately limited to routes and conditions appropriate to the machine.
Traffic management is part of the same assessment. Adding a quieter vehicle category requires routes, parking locations, charging procedures, speed limits, driver responsibilities, and interactions with pedestrians and plant to be considered within the site’s existing transport plan. Electric propulsion removes engine noise that can be intrusive around welfare and office areas, but that also means other site users may receive less audible warning of an approaching vehicle.
EVision markets the carts for flexible hire rather than purchase alone, with daily, weekly, monthly, and longer-term agreements available. That gives contractors or plant operators a way to test utilisation on an individual site before committing to permanent fleet capacity, which is useful where the commercial case depends heavily on the layout and frequency of internal journeys.
The supplier also offers nationwide delivery, allowing a vehicle to be deployed for a particular project rather than tied permanently to one depot. For contractors, the relevant calculation would include the hire charge alongside time saved, larger vehicle journeys avoided, charging demand, maintenance, route suitability, and the amount of the working day for which the cart is actually used.
H E Services’ Strood trial does not yet provide those figures, so there is little value in presenting it as proof of a new site-transport model. What it does provide is a practical test of a vehicle category that sits below traditional construction fleet assets but above walking: low-speed electric transport for people moving repeatedly around a large controlled area.
The solar roof adds some charging support without changing that basic proposition. EVision itself states that the panels do not eliminate conventional charging, which avoids the more dubious claim that a small vehicle can sustain an intensive construction duty cycle from roof-mounted solar alone.
The next useful step would be operational data from a live project rather than another demonstration. Journey counts, hours of use, mains energy consumed, solar contribution, and avoided mileage in larger vehicles would show whether the carts reduce cost and emissions or simply add another asset to the site fleet. Until those figures exist, the Strood trial remains an interesting logistics experiment — one built around using a smaller vehicle for a smaller job.
