A prince’s Jaguar E-Type could help revolutionise taking out the trash

When car fanatics fret about the inevitable end of the internal combustion engine, they worry that the thrilling roar of a V12 Ferrari will be silenced. What they sometimes forget is that it also means the end of blaring 7l garbage truck engines roaring down the street at 5am.

Fortunately, a David Beckham-backed company is working to solve the problem of noisy, not to mention pollutant emitting, engines.

Lunaz was founded in 2018 with the mission of creating the world’s first electric-powered Rolls-Royce through a process it calls “upcycling.” The famed footballer has a 10% stake in the company. 

The founding moment for the company was Prince Harry’s priceless electric Jaguar E-Type, which he drove to Meghan Markle on his wedding day in 2018. That eye-catching E-Type sparked an idea in Lorenz, which led him to start Lunaz, and brought him together with Beckham who wanted his own all-electric classic like Harry. (Beckham has become something of a regular customer; he gave his son Brooklyn a Lunaz-converted  1954 Jaguar XK140 in April as a wedding gift.)

Today the Lunaz factory in Silverstone, the home of the British Grand Prix, is stocked with beautiful classic cars like Sophia Loren’s Rolls-Royce Cloud, purchased by a high-end hotel in London to shuttle guests in all-electric style, and a 1950s James Young two-door coupé Bentley, with an electric conversion price tag of up to to £1m (roughly R20.6m).

But Lunaz has set its sights higher than accessories for the rich and famous. Beckham, who apparently “checks in every few weeks”, according to the company’s CEO David Lorenz, a former founder of London’s The Cuckoo Club, is just as focused on Lunaz’s new mission to electrify the world’s garbage trucks. It’s their first step in a far-reaching goal to up cycle the 80 million diesel-powered industrial vehicles around the world. 

Recently, the Lunaz factory expanded into a 60,960 square metre location that can electrify 1,100 vehicles every year. The new factory will have “dirty” and “clean” sections, says Lorenz, with old garbage trucks coming in, and upcycled ones going out. The upgraded ones, which Lorenz calls the “Bentley of bin lorries,” have quieter electric motors and batteries, along with popular tweaks like 360-degree cameras and more comfortable drivers’ seats.

The so-called “dirty” trucks have diesel engines that average only around 78l/100km and have to run constantly for 14 hours a day to power the vehicle’s hydraulic, garbage-crushing mechanisms, even when it’s stopped. They’re also a source of particulate pollution on their runs around residential areas.

In the UK, the councils that oversee the trucks retire them after 10 years or when they have as little as 112,000km on the clock. After that, they are “probably sold abroad and carry on operating”, says Tonguy Tomes, author of “Ditching Diesel”, a report by environment consultancy Eunomia.  Lorenz wants to end this practice, which he disparagingly describes as “carbon postboxing,” where richer countries send their carbon emissions to poorer countries rather than taking them off the road entirely.

Lorenz’s longer-term vision is that whenever any industrial diesel-powered vehicle comes to the end of its life, there will be a Lunaz plant somewhere nearby to give it an upgrade and keep it on the road.

He says that fixing the UK’s garbage trucks could make a significant dent in the 330,000 tonnes of CO2 that trucks operated by the UK’s local authorities emit every year (more than all the combined CO2 emissions in the City of London and Westminster), let alone the CO2 emissions required to build new vehicles. Lunaz EVs are competitively priced, according to Lorenz. A diesel Mercedes Econic refuse truck costs about £260,000-£300,000 (roughly R5.2m to R6m) new, with electric models going for £400,000-£450,000 (roughly R8m to R9m). Lunaz says its upcycled model costs around £250,000-£400,000 (roughly R5m to R8m), depending on the specification. The world’s supply chain problems are also making it harder for UK councils to get new trucks, sweetening Lunaz’s trucks. “There’s a 15-month wait time for a diesel Mercedes Econic, let alone an electric one,” Lorenz says.

Lorenz’s dream is to turn his company’s name into a verb like Xerox or Google. He hopes people will say “let’s Lunaz that vehicle” and that “UEVs,” or upcycled electric vehicles, will be a standard across the car industry. 

But first, he has to get his electric trucks on the road.  Lorenz says the UK’s local governments are “clamouring” to get his trucks ahead of UK legislation that now requires 100% of new vehicles to be low emissions by 2030, and it’s about to announce its first deals with local government and waste management operators in the UK and Europe. He would not, however, share specifics.

Tomes, who spoke to several local councils around the UK for his report including the City of London — which has recently moved to an all-electric fleet — says “there is increasing interest in the 2030 timeline”, but also that there’s catching up to do.

The UK “hasn’t yet procured anywhere near as much as cities in Brazil and China, which have ordered hundreds of vehicles”, says Tomes. That compares to the 27 trucks that the Manchester City Council recently bought from Lunaz rival Electra Commercial Vehicles, to be operated by waste management company Biffa. Lunaz just added Biffa’s former CEO Ian Wakelin to its board, along with Andrew Cope, the founder of Zenith, the UK’s largest independent vehicle leasing company in an effort to attract local government orders for electric trucks.

“There’s a need for the UK public sector to be leading by example,” says Tomes. Lorenz is standing by, waiting for the call, to send out electrified trucks.

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