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from the I-wonder-who-delivers-the-parts? dept.
UPS will work with partner Workhorse, a battery-electric transportation technology company, to develop and deploy a fleet of 50 custom-built plug-in electric delivery trucks with zero emissions.
The goal is to make trucks that cost as much to buy as do traditional fuel-based delivery vehicles — even without taking into account subsidies. The Workhorse-designed vehicles will be all-electric, and are designed to run on a single charge throughout a normal delivery day and then charge back up overnight.
Workhorse says they'll have a 100-mile range, which is a good fit for in-city routes, and the trucks will first enter testing in urban areas in various parts of the U.S., including Atlanta, Dallas and LA. The test will lead to fine-tuning, which will lead to a larger fleet deployment targeting 2019.
Source: TechCrunch
Also at The Verge, Reuters and Cincinnati.com
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Tuesday February 27 2018, @03:01AM
It's about 15 miles from the city center, give or take a few miles. It's also about 15 miles from me (I don't live in the city center, but another 'burb). So that's enough range to drive to the city, drive around some, and get back. That's assuming they even have to drive a route. The place I work for does enough shipping that FedEx will bring a truck 100% full of shipments only to us, drop them all off, fill the truck 100% with shipments from us, and go back to wherever they came from (I don't actually know where FedEx's distribution center is). If we switched to UPS they could do the same thing, and that's only about 30 miles - will within range.
I would guess that UPS knows what they are doing. They have a lot of trucks, and even if they can only replace 10-20% of them, it may very well be worth it if the savings are enough. Keep in mind UPS already designs their own trucks. And this effort is really just the first generation - they'll take what they learn and build a second, third, etc. generation that will be able to replace more of their fleet. It may be a very long time before 100% of UPS's trucks could be electric, but it wouldn't surprise me terribly if in 15-20 years if most of them were electric.