The Cocoon team hit the CV Show at the NEC on the 24th April 2024 after a short hiatus. It’s always a good time to meet existing customers and suppliers, make new connections and see the latest products on offer from the manufacturers and suppliers.
This year was extremely busy with a lot of focus around the Ford Commercial Vehicle stand due to the latest Ford Transit Custom and the Transit Courier van. It was also nice to see local companies like Chevin Fleet Solutions also.
Let’s take a look at some of the highlights:
EV Cafe
For those that don’t know, EV Cafe is an EV Community resource offering chats of all things EV, the future and help with the transition into EV vehicles either personally or for your fleet solutions. If you haven’t subscribed to the EV Cafe podcast, do it today!
EV Cafe had a huge stand with a selection of current and prototype electric vehicles on display, their partners were also offering their literature and information including Webfleet Solutions, Zaptec and PlugMeIn.
Canoo Vehicles
Canoo offer a range of fully electric vehicles with some striking appearances. Based on a modular platform, they can purpose build vehicles for most purposes whether you need it for deliveries, carrying materials for construcion or you just need it to carry passengers.
Canoo were very keen to see how we can help them offer their commercial range of vehicles on our flexible Van Subscription fleet and we hope to announce any partnerships via our blog soon.
MAXUS Electric Vehicles
Maxus is a subsidary of SAIC Motor which you may not recognise, but if you know MG Motors then you will know that it is part of a wider vehicle manufacturer. Maxus used the opportunity at the EV cafe to show off it’s range of electric vehicles
On display was a Sainsbury’s branded Maxus vehicle which is used for grocery deliveries, a fantastic electric pickup truck that we’ve already helped business customers obtain via our Find a Car Lease service and another Maxus that resemmbles very closly to the Volkswagen Id Buzz.
Prohire Vehicle Rental Software
A trip to the Prohire stand allowed us for our first glance at their web based rental software that we currently use here at Cocoon Vehicles and have done since around 2012.
Our current Prohire software is Windows based and we’re super excited (as Mac users) to swap to a browser based system which looks super-slick. We were also made aware that the software looks after over 90,000 vehicles in 800 locations amazing.
Special thanks to Molly and Mike Carlyle and for the Prohire Cup!
Renault Commercial Vehicles
We’re huge fans of Renault in the Cocoon Vehicles office and it was lovely to see some familiar faces on the stand at the CV show this year. On display were electric variants of the Renault Kangoo, Renault Trafic and the Renault Master.
The latest Renault Trafic is a brilliant van evolving from the vehicles we used to run in 2009 to 2012 on our short-term van lease fleet. These E-tech versions are ideal for those who don’t need the range of the ICE variants.
Bott
We really enjoyed our time speaking with the guys from Bott, who offer internal van conversions to help effiency when it comes tho those companies who require a mobile worskhop.
On display was one of our favourite panel vans at this moment; the VW Id Buzz Cargo, kitted out for those who need to work on the move.
Ford Commercial Vehicles
Finally, we end with the Ford Commercial Vehicle display displaying the latest versions of their Transit Custom in various guises
We absolutely loved the green Ford Transit Custom MS-RT which was attracting the most attention on the stand, followed by the latest Ford Transit Custom Nugget (Which were super popular on our subscription service in previous guise) – We were also to the latest looks of the Ford E-Transit Courer van, it looks amazing.
Just for anyone comparing the latest Ford Transit Custom with the latest Volkswagen Transporter, those savvy enough will have noticed that this is the same van with Ford and VW sharing resources to build their latest commercial vehicles.
Ford Ranger’s are currently available to pre-order on our van subscription service.
CV Show 2024
We had an excellent day at the CV show in 2024 and we’re already looking forward to attending next year, although more compact than previous years and missing a few of the major manufacturers such as Citroen, Peugeot, Vauxhall, Volkswagen and MAN, it was still worth the train ride across to the NEC.
Please let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
