Smith Electric Vehicles (SMTH)

[Joz]

Smith have been building EVs since 1920. So this is not some untested technology being thrown together by some over-enthusiastic team of green newcomers with no idea how to run a business.

They mainly produced 'milk floats'. Those open-sided vans which made doorstep deliveries of bottled milk to households all over the UK. Some of the ones I remember from my childhood in the 1950s were already 20-30 years old and still reliably humming along. Later ones also lasted 20-30 years or more, being so simple to maintain. Mostly powered by heavy old lead-acid batteries in those days.

Smith also made battery powered industrial tugs and tractors, for towing luggage trailers around airports, and shifting personnel around in underground salt mines.

UK engineering company Tanfield Group took control in 2004 and turned Smith into a maker of highway vehicles suited to the 21st century - since when hundreds of their Smith Newton trucks and Smith Edison vans have been in daily use in the UK and nearby parts of Europe.

Smith's US offshoot established in 2009 has since bought its UK parent from Tanfield Group (Tanfield still hold a minority stake, but that is likely to partly or wholly disposed of in the US ipo). Smith is now very much a US company.