IKEA has a target of having 100% electric home deliveries by 2025. Vulog talked with Angela Hultberg Head of Sustainable Mobility at Ingka Group as she shares her insights into why sustainable mobility is key to future-proofing business and embedding innovation. Angela Hultberg: “We announced that in 2018, so we’ve been at it now for two years now, and I’m happy to say that we’re reaching some major milestones”.
IKEA learned so far that the first vehicles are definitely the hardest, so their goal is getting that first electric truck rolling in the market and then scale from that. Angela Hultberg: “To date, we’ve deployed electric vehicles in 19 of our 30 markets, which is great. We even have a few cities where we decided to have 100% electric deliveries by 2020. One of them was Shanghai, and since it’s one of the biggest cities in the world plagued by pollution, it seemed like a good place to start. In fact, I’m happy to say that it’s been one of our biggest successes: it took us less than a year to grow 100% electric! This means that in China now, we’re not deploying or piloting…we’re scaling! Several other cities are now offering 100% electric services”.
Angela Hultberg: “We’re seeing other markets doing amazing work, too. Spain is integrating cargo bikes into the logistics chain, we’re trying barge deliveries in Paris to reduce congestion, to go by water instead of the road. We’re looking into new ways of moving goods. For instance, can we deliver to lockers that we can replenish at midnight via electric vehicles, so we don’t add to congestion? Can we find different ways of doing things and what should the offer look like to our customers? The bottom line is we’re not just changing the engines, we’re changing the entire business model”.