AN INTERNATIONAL company with a base just outside Oswestry has committed to having a fleet of 30,000 electric vehicles by 2030.

The BT Group, which has a base at Whittington House in Park Hall, has made one of the 10 biggest EV fleet pledges by UK businesses.

The vehicles are predicted to save around 177,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.

The figures were released this week by Select Car Leasing, which looked at 35 companies that have committed to EV fleet targets and estimated how much they’re going to save in CO2 emissions every year.

The International Transport Forum states that almost one third of transport-related CO2 emissions are from trade-related freight fleets.

And with the 2030 ban on the sale of fossil fuelled cars looming, attention is turning to business road users to see what they’re doing to drastically reduce emissions.

However, although BT came eight in the list, leading the way by a country mile is Uber-competitor Lyft, pledging to introduce a staggering two million EVs on the road by 2030.

With its electric fleet, it would save 11.8 million tonnes in CO2 emissions every year – the same amount saved by running 2,455 wind turbines.

Amazon, in second place would need an EV fleet 20 times bigger to match Lyft, but there’s still no underestimating owner Jeff Bezos. The first of the custom-built Rivian vans made their maiden delivery runs this year with 10,000 of them promised to be on roads by 2022. The entire fleet is scheduled to be running by 2030 as part of Amazon’s pledge to be a carbon neutral company by 2040.

Other UK owned businesses appearing in the top 10 include GlaxoSmithKline and the UK government which is leading by example as they’re planning to electrify their entire fleet of 40,000 vehicles by 2027, three years ahead of the new fuelled car ban.