ET Lander cruises through the streets of London

According to Jo Desborough, Head Gardener for The Bedford Estates, the Etesia ET Lander is a luxury electric utility vehicle which can be driven from site to site through the busy streets of London without worrying about the battery life.

The Bedford Estates has owned, developed and cared for much of Bloomsbury, London since 1669. The Estate comprises some 200 properties containing over 825,000 square feet of office and educational accommodation, some 100,000 square feet of retail space, over 1,000 hotel bedrooms and more than 550 flats.

It also includes two public garden squares, Russell Square and Bloomsbury Square and several private garden areas. These include Bedford Square, the only intact Georgian garden square in London.

The location of these gardens was a reason for choosing the ET Lander according to Jo.

“We chose the Etesia ET Lander because it’s a vehicle that’s easier to drive on the roads.

We have to go between our gardens and in order to do that, there are busy London roads in between, so having a cab that’s fully enclosed helps us with the traffic. It’s more comfortable to ride in and the features that it offers are perfect for what we need.”

100% electric, spacious, well-equipped and user-friendly, the ET Lander is built on a robust chassis and has an array of options including a three-way tipper bed with dual control from the fully fitted two-seater cab or by remote control when outside the vehicle. With a length of just 3.72 meters, the ET Lander is very compact. Thanks to the power steering, the short turning radius of 4.40 meters and 360 ° visibility, it goes anywhere. The autonomy of the vehicle lasts for a full working day – without noise pollution, can transport loads of up to 940kgs and can also tow up to 750kgs.

The latest models are fully N1 homologation compliant meaning that the ET Landers are fully road legal along with being able to be used off road. They also feature lithium-ion batteries which ensures that the range of the ET Lander extends to 100km and have a charger system compatible with a standard type 2EV car charger.

The battery-life on the ET Lander certainly doesn’t concern Jo and she also revealed that the team wouldn’t be without it.

“We’ve had the ET Lander since January, so we’ve been running it around our gardens for the last six months or so. The battery life has been really good, and we hardly ever have to charge it, so that’s very impressive. We use it to do lots of short journeys and you might expect that the batteries would run out maybe slightly quicker, but in fact, we find that they last several weeks for us.

“We often use the ET Lander for collecting our tonne bags to pick up and bring back to our main head office where we have our green waste storage, and also for taking all our equipment over to the gardens.

“Using the ET Lander has made life a lot easier going between the gardens and driving on the roads. It’s very comfortable in the cab, very manoeuvrable and easy to drive. It also has windscreen wipers and having a radio is the icing on the cake.

“It has a very luxury feel to it and it feels more like driving a car rather than garden equipment.”

Bloombury Estates purchased the ET Lander through Etesia dealer RT Machinery and Jo was quick to praise the service she has received to date.

“RT Machinery were very helpful throughout the whole process. Scott Reynolds (Area Sales Manager) came and delivered the ET Lander and ran through all of the directions and showed us how to use it, which was clear and comprehensive.

“They also come and do our servicing, which they do on a regular basis. They get the equipment back to us as soon as they can and generally provide a really good service and are always available when we need them.”