DHL Slated to Debut Electric Delivery Van in U.S. Next Year
Reuters is reporting that German logistics company DHL is planning on debuting an all-electric delivery van in the United States next year.
DHL will debut the Work L delivery van through its electric vehicle subsidiary StreetScooter beginning Spring 2020. The company will initially use the van in two U.S. markets, one on each coast, with full deployment coming in 2022 or 2023.
According to the Centre for Alternative Technology, cities around the world are working to significantly reduce emissions, with “cities such as Oslo, Antwerp, Melbourne and Copenhagen have risen to this bigger ambition and are pushing for 100 per cent greenhouse gas reductions by at least 2050.”
Companies such as DHL, Amazon and others are working to reduce their impact when making deliveries, especially when considering that the transportation industry was responsible for 14 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2010.
DHL already has a significant head start in this arena, thanks to StreetScooter. According an interview with Ulrich Stuhec, StreetScooter’s chief technology officer, StreetScooter has “the most experience on the road while others are still working on their first prototypes.”
In Amsterdam, Vienna and Germany, “roughly 10,000 of the 12,000 StreetScooter electric vehicles on the road make DHL deliveries.”
StreetScooter estimates their vehicles already save roughly 36,000 metric tons of CO2 per year, per truck.