CGE Grégoire-Charbonneaux - To each his own Fridolin
Here in Switzerland, the post office started delivering our letters with the VW 147 in 1965. In Sweden, as we have just learned , the letter carrier used the Tjorven 440 based on the DAF 44 from 1969. And the French? They also got their own small sliding-door delivery van in 1972: the CGE Grégoire-Charbonneaux, which, unlike its foreign equivalents, was powered by an electric motor.
The double name stands for the division of labor between the inventors: front-wheel drive pioneer Jean-Albert Grégoire had designed the substructure; Renault designer Philippe Charbonneaux created the angular plastic body. The backbone was formed by a sturdy box frame, with the batteries stacked on its arms between the axles. The suspension parts came from the Renault 6.
With an output of 20 hp, a top speed of 75 km/h and a range of 100 kilometers, the delivery van was actually sufficiently motorized for its intended task. However, while a good 6000 of the VW and just over 2000 of the Tjorven were built, the Compagnie Générale d'Electricité (CGE) was only able to assemble 20 examples of the Grégoire-Charbonneaux by 1974.
