UPS will start using electric delivery trucks

United Parcel Service (UPS) is going to develop 50 plug-in electric delivery trucks with Workhorse Group Inc., a company involved in electric transportation technology.

In a press statement on its site, UPS said it would first test the vehicles on urban routes across the country, including Atlanta, Dallas and Los Angeles. The electric trucks will operate during the day and then charged overnight.

Each vehicle “will have a range of approximately 100 miles between charges, ideal for delivery routes in and around cities,” Workhorse said.

Comparable in acquisition cost to trucks that use fuel

According to UPS, the custom-built electric trucks “will be comparable in acquisition cost to conventional-fueled trucks without any subsidies – an industry first that is breaking a key barrier to large-scale fleet adoption.”

The courier company assured that the electric trucks would have no tailpipe emissions.

UPS is going to start using electric delivery trucks soon. (Source)

Carlton Rose, president of Global Fleet Maintenance and Engineering for UPS, said: “Electric vehicle technology is rapidly improving with battery, charging and smart grid advances that allow us to specify our delivery vehicles to eliminate emissions, noise, and dependence on diesel and gasoline.”

A leap forward for the company’s delivery trucks

Rose also said that with the company’s “scale and real-world duty cycles,” the electric trucks would be a big leap forward for the custom-built delivery trucks of UPS. The electric trucks will become part of UPS’s Rolling Lab fleet of over 9,000 vehicles that use alternative fuel and advanced tech.

Workhorse, for its part, said the electric vehicles “provide nearly 400 percent fuel efficiency improvement as well as optimum energy efficiency, vehicle performance, and better driver experience.”

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(Featured image by Qualle via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0)