Land-based College chooses HiSun electric UTV for campus courses

Posted on:30/03/2023

Climate change is one of our biggest challenges in the 21^st century. By changing how we travel, produce, use energy and make choices about the products and services we buy, we can significantly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

Research has shown that electric vehicles are better for the environment emitting fewer greenhouse gases and air pollutants than petrol or diesel cars. This is also true for all-terrain utility vehicles.

Borders College’s Newtown St Boswell Campus is the first college in Scotland to purchase and deploy a fully electric all-terrain utility vehicle. The brand-new HiSun Sector 15 kW lithium-ion utility vehicle is used daily for practical learning activities as part of several campus courses.

College Land-Based Service Engineer Lecturer Dave Black, one of the staff instructing students on the safe use of the HiSun Sector utility vehicle, explained how the college came to acquire the UTV:

"I was involved in getting Borders College to purchase the HiSun electric vehicle and, along with colleague Bruce Winwood, spent quite a while testing different manufacturer UTVs. I have been an NPTC and LANTRA ATV assessor for over ten years.

We work closely with Henderson Grass machinery at Selkirk, and they were very good at giving us a demonstration vehicle to assess the machine's capabilities. We found the Hisun 15 kw to be the best all-round vehicle. The next step was to convince our senior leadership team to finance the machine. Andrew Johnson, my head of department, was supportive and saw the need to engage in the future and sustainable fuels etc.

The vehicle is now being used to full capacity in teaching our groups, Agriculture, Landbased Service Engineering, Gamekeeping and Outside Agency.

It is a different driving experience but is more than capable of the tasks required, and I would recommend HiSun EV 15kw to any other Agricultural College sectors."

Back to entries