Dundee City Council has defended its near-£100,000 electric cars purchase, after an employee branded it a huge waste of public money.
The employee, who asked not to be named, said the Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric cars, costing £23,990 each, are not fit for purpose.
“They were bought two weeks ago for Dundee Contract Services supervisors but have been shunned by the workers,” he said. “The idea was to buy cost-effective cars, but they were found to be unsuitable for the purpose, which was for site managers to shuttle between council-run jobs.
“But because of the need to supply material to jobs, the cars are too small to fit in building supplies (copper pipe in long lengths, sink units, etc).”
The employee said, “Daily, the four cars sit in the front car park, with rarely all four cars being used. In some cases, a site manager is using the car, but already has a council-leased normal car. One electric car is used to deliver internal mail, twice a day. Is this value for money that Dundee City Council claim to give the taxpayer?”
A council spokesman said of the cars, “They are primarily intended to be used for transporting supervisors between sites rather than for making deliveries of materials.
“The vehicles have been brought into service within the last two weeks and already five diesel vehicles have been removed from service. It is intended to closely monitor their ongoing levels of use and where possible to further remove existing vehicles from service.
“Savings from the replacement of the diesel vehicles with the electric cars on a pooled basis will be about £12,000 a year.”
In a report to the housing, Dundee Contract Services and environment services committee last month stated the council was awarded a grant of £105,000 from the Low Carbon Vehicle Procurement Support Scheme, sponsored by Transport Scotland, and £60,135 of that was to be used towards the £96,853 cost of the cars.