THINK announces today its entry into the electric delivery van segment, with two new vehicles designed to meet the growing demand for small electrically powered deliveries, particularly in urban areas.

THINK’s entry into the urban delivery van market comes with two variants to be introduced between now and the end of the year. The first, the THINK City N1 type approved for European van homologation, carries goods up to a maximum 237 kilograms and 700-litres in volume, and offers significant tax advantages in many markets.

The THINK Compact van follows later this year. With an increased capacity of 900-litres and designed as part of a large tender for fleet sales to the French Government’s UGAP program, this is an interesting product to many other markets, with several enquiries from potential Spanish customers and others already.

This represents a new and broader market approach from THINK, with a line-up of specialist delivery vehicles based on the popular THINK City, demonstrating both the versatility of this platform and further reinforcing the urban focus of the brand. More variants are actively under consideration, providing the market delivers the anticipated demand in this emerging segment.

Barry Engle, CEO THINK, said: “We see great potential for a range of electric vans based on the THINK City. There are many customers for this type of vehicle, from city authorities to small businesses and postal deliveries. These short hop, urban journeys are perfect for vehicles such as ours. Demand in this segment is increasing across the world, it is an area of the market that has yet to attract strong competition and could deliver valuable scale economies to a niche player like THINK.”

He added: “We made huge progress in 2010 with the development of the THINK City, the start of production in the US, and entry into new markets. We will step up the pace even further in 2011, developing THINK’s appeal with products such as the delivery vans, building our distribution network and focusing more resources on sales and marketing to increase market penetration.”

THINK’s entry into this new segment comes on the back of a series of product updates and enhancements completed over the course of the last 12 months. In 2010 the company introduced the first THINK City 2+2 model, the new fourth generation EV drive controller technology, air conditioning as standard across all markets, ESP (Electronic Stability Programme) as standard, homologation for sale in the U.S. and during the first month of 2011, a new delivery van series.

Photo caption: Images of the THINK City N1 and THINK Compact vans.