from the getting-plugged-in-to-the-future dept.
For years, UPS has been gesturing toward a future where some of its delivery vehicles are electric, autonomous, or drones. Now, the delivery giant is taking steps to make that happen with a trio of announcements designed to boost the company's profile — and maybe its stock, too — ahead of its quarterly earnings report. It's the latest sign of UPS's ambition to future-proof its business, especially as Amazon builds out its own delivery infrastructure.
The first announcement concerns a pilot project with Waymo, the Alphabet subsidiary and leading operator of self-driving vehicles. UPS will use some of Waymo's self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans to shuttle packages between some of its stores in the Metro Phoenix area and its hub in Tempe, Arizona. The minivans won't be fully driverless; Waymo says it will keep trained safety drivers in the front seat to monitor operations. Despite the limited nature of the pilot, both Waymo and UPS say a "long-term plan" between the companies remains possible.
[...] The second announcement relates to electric vehicles. UPS says it will purchase 10,000 electric delivery vans from a UK startup called Arrival, which it will then add to its fleet in the UK, Europe, and North America over the next four years. UPS's venture capital arm will also make an investment in Arrival of an undisclosed amount.
Arrival only just emerged out of quasi-stealth in recent weeks after announcing a $110 million investment from Hyundai and Kia. Arrival has been working with UPS for several years, first announcing their partnership in 2016. Arrival says that today's vehicle order and investment will "accelerate deployment of fit-for-purpose electric fleets at scale."
[...] Lastly, UPS says it will bring its drone delivery testing to San Diego. The company has been delivering pharmaceuticals and other lightweight cargo to people's homes in North Carolina in partnership with CVS Pharmacy as well as Matternet, a drone logistics company. Now, it will start test deliveries with the University of California San Diego health system.
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FedEx plans for an all-electric delivery fleet by 2040:
FedEx will replace its current delivery trucks with electric models until its entire fleet is made up of zero—emission vehicles by 2040. The company is making the transition as a way to help it achieve its goal to reach carbon neutral status in the same year. In its announcement, FedEx says its will slowly phase out its existing parcel delivery trucks and that 50 percent of its global vehicle purchases will be electric by 2025. All its vehicle purchases will be EVs by 2030, and it's aiming to retire its gas-powered trucks completely 10 years after that.
[...] FedEx also plans to work with customers to make their supply chains sustainable with carbon–neutral shipping offerings and sustainable packaging solutions. In addition, it will invest money into making its facilities worldwide more efficient and to give them the capability to run on renewable energy.
Related:
UPS Buying Thousands of Electric Vans; Teaming Up with Waymo to Accelerate the Future of Delivery
USPS Picks Oshkosh Defense for Greener Mail Trucks
Arrival pauses work on its electric bus and car projects:
Anglo-American EV startup Arrival is putting its groundbreaking bus and car projects on ice as it struggles to manage its cash reserves. The Financial Times reports that the company, which said it would lay off a third of its staff last month, would now focus on completing its delivery van. Arrival said that it had anything up to 20,000 orders with UPS for the vehicle, and is expecting to get the first models out of the door later this year. That will hopefully reduce the pressure on the company's bottom line, and boost its share price, which has fallen 90 percent since it went public via a SPAC last year.
[...] The biggest tragedy from all of this is that Arrival's focus on revolutionizing public buses was a genuinely different approach from most EV makers. Buses are a fixture in pretty much every city, and while it's always better for the environment to use one over a car, making them even cleaner was a great plan. That the public project has been iced in favor of the fleet of logistics vans is not surprising, but it's certainly not a great sign for the future of public transport.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @03:20PM (3 children)
Who is developing robot dogs to bark at these robot deliverymen?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @05:25PM
Dogs chase ICE vehicles, cats chase electric (milk delivery) vans.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @06:52PM
Or will be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM3GM299orc [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Saturday February 01 2020, @10:36PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @05:23PM
CVS made the morning news here, seems they overwork their staff and have a pretty high rate of mis-filling prescriptions, leading to some deaths when people take the wrong drug/dosage. There were other complaints as well, for example, pushing 90 day refills for powerful drugs that the doctor specifically limited to a shorter time span.
I'm guessing that UPS might quietly drop their partnership with CVS Pharmacy ...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday February 01 2020, @05:27PM
Read: "US burying thousands of electric vans." What kind of weird repurposing of a failed product launch into an energy storage scheme would that be?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @07:18PM (9 children)
Can suck a big fat egg for trying to say burning oil/gas is the only way to maintain civilization. Even if they burn oil/gas/coal to generate the electricity for these vehicles they are still more efficient!!
Anti-science but totally capable of comprehending the science. Khallow, I can't even.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @07:40PM (5 children)
Is preemptive trolling the next thing?
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Saturday February 01 2020, @07:57PM (2 children)
Seems so. I'm assuming you made a comment somewhere that there wasn't a viable short term alternative to continuing to burn fossil fuels, or maybe that electric cars weren't as carbon friendly as people think?
Fusion can't get here fast enough IMO.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @08:45PM (1 child)
Fusion is great and all but some AC says it'll boil off the oceans in a few hundred years
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Saturday February 01 2020, @10:02PM
Hmmm, maybe not fusion specifically, but exponentially increasing power generation/usage comes with a very real planetary heat dissipation problem long term if we don't want to follow in Venus's footsteps.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @08:43PM
A) not trolling
B) just a continuation from the arguments he had made
C) reality doesn't care about your feefees :D:);P
Z) siddown, shaddup, let the adults finally have a decade to clean up the house before you shit on the carpets again.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 01 2020, @09:52PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 02 2020, @03:12AM (2 children)
How much does that efficiency presently cost? Sorry, they're quite inefficient at present in that way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 03 2020, @12:36AM (1 child)
????
So you are at a loss and will just state a quibbling falsehood? Electric motors would still be more efficient than internal combustion engines, and if we switch off coal/gas/oil then there is simply no more air pollution and excessive energy lost to waste heat.
Just when I start thinking you might be capable of objectivity and following the science you retreat into your core belief system ignoring simple facts.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 04 2020, @05:24PM
At saving what? And how much is it going to cost for those self-driving electric vehicles?
Air pollution, well that still has some value to reduce, but waste heat? Not that important compared to delivering packages.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday February 01 2020, @09:40PM
This is a big win for the sustainable energy economy. UPS is the most serious player in the package delivery business, so with this scale of commitment they will blaze the trail for everyone else. Of course, they are feeling Amazon nipping at their heels, but be that as it may it's a big win.
After this, there will be no reason for FedEx, DHL, and all others to not follow suit. If UPS racks up greater profitability thanks to lower fuel costs, their competitors will have no choice but to follow.
It will be interesting to observe the knock-on effects of those fleets switching to electric. NYC has some of the highest child asthma rates in the country, and many blame the trucks. Air quality and visibility ought to improve also. And if we stop using oil to move goods around, it will suck all the wind out of the sails of nasty petro-regimes around the world, from Russia to Saudi Arabia, from Iran to Venezuela.
Oh, yes, it will help with climate change, too.
Washington DC delenda est.