UPS announced today that it’s planning to soon deploy 50 electric delivery trucks that are designed by Workhorse Group Inc. They will cost just about the same as traditional, conventionality fueled trucks. In terms of some specifics, they will have a between-charge range of around 100-miles, be zero-emission and UPS will be testing in several cities this year.
“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,” Carlton Rose, UPS’ president of global fleet maintenance and engineering, said in a statement.
“With our scale and real-world duty cycles, these new electric trucks will be a quantum leap forward for the purpose-built UPS delivery fleet. The all electric trucks will deliver by day and re-charge overnight.”
The company will be testing its first batch of trucks in Dallas, Atlanta and Los Angeles. Based on the performance results they get from the testing, the vehicle design will be tweaked ahead of the larger planned deployment that’s slated for sometime in 2019. “This innovation is the result of Workhorse working closely with UPS over the last four years, refining our electric vehicles with hard fought lessons from millions of road miles and thousands of packages delivered,” Workhorse CEO Steve Burns said in a statement.
