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On Thursday, Daimler announced that it would bring its line of short-haul electric trucks to the US. The United Parcel Service (UPS) will buy the first three trucks, and Daimler is also offering eight trucks to New York City-based non-profits, including the Wildlife Conservation Society, the New York Botanical Garden, Habitat for Humanity New York City, and Big Reuse Brooklyn.
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The Fuso eCanter trucks will have a range of 62 miles (or about 100km) and will be sold in Japan and Europe as well. Daimler said it's only planning on producing 500 trucks in the next year, but it intends to start mass-producing the trucks in 2019. It's unclear how much these trucks cost.The trucks have a load capacity of three and a half tons, Daimler said, with a powertrain that draws on "six high-voltage lithium-ion battery packs with 420 V and 13.8 kWh each."
New York City and the Bronx in particular have asthma rates several times the national average. Many blame the high levels of trucking in the city. Shifting delivery fleets to EVs could help.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by frojack on Saturday September 16 2017, @06:03PM (2 children)
In a perfectly flat city, no hills, no stop and go traffic, 62 miles might work for some specialized tasks.
It might be perfect for garbage collection on the Botanical Garden grounds, but that's about it.
Every UPS delivery truck does more miles than that before lunch.
This thing is destined to become a white elephant, and a joke.
The claimed savings will never materialize because the range means you will have to have an equal sized ICE-powered truck on standby all the time for out of range destinations, or when the electric truck is down for recharging.
Using Tesla's numbers [tesla.com] the best you could expect using typical electrical sources is recovering 11 to 15 miles of range per hour. So without a commercial charge source at both ends, 30 miles is your safe range.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday September 16 2017, @07:40PM
Why so negative, froj? Do you have a citation for the mileage claim? Did a UPS truck run over your neighbor's yappy dog? I'm just not seeing the motivation.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 17 2017, @03:06AM
From Ars comments: https://www.afdc.energy.gov/data/10309 [energy.gov] delivery 13000 per year, assume 260 days, 50 miles per day average, meaning somewhere there are trucks that need that or less. There are other comments talking about where UPS has a NY depot and how much it covers: small zone because it's very packed. Then you have the one claiming "I work at UPS" and also saying for his city it would be OK for the trucks there, not for rural. So unless Manhattan is rural now...
You know, maybe UPS checked their own data before ordering three.