When I was a kid, we had milk delivered to our door every day. There’s plenty to be said about that, but today’s point: It was delivered by an EV, and at the time it was completely normal.

When I was growing up in the 1980s, we had fresh milk delivered to our door every day, by someone driving an EV. At the time that was completely normal. Over time, those EVs just faded away.

The EV design was chosen in part because they’re quiet (especially compared the the diesel and petrol engines of the time) – the milk was being delivered to residential streets in the early hours of the morning.

There’s a lot of buzz around the likes of Amazon and UPS ordering huge numbers of EV delivery vehicles from companies like Rivian and Arrival. These things are super cool and potentially transformative, but the concept isn’t exactly new. Specialist electric vehicles designed for short hop (or last mile) deliveries in towns and cities have existed for nearly a century. It turns out Wales and Edwards started making these things in the early 1950s, and Morrison-Electricar were building them as far back as the 1930s.

We just forgot about them for a while.