UPS Adds One Hundred EV Delivery Vans To Fleet

In a move benefiting both the environment and its bottom line, UPS purchased one hundred fully-electric commercial vehicles for use in its California fleet last month from Electric Vehicles International (EVI). Headquartered in Stockton, CA, EVI will be providing CARB-approved walk-in vans (EVI-WI) to replace aging diesel trucks. The EVI-WI's have a ninety-mile range and should displace 126,000 gallons of fuel a year. The one hundred class 6 delivery trucks will be deployed early next January around the South Coast Air Basin, San Joaquin Valley, and the Sacramento Valley.

The partnership began tentatively back in September 2010, when both companies undertook a ninety-day demonstration period with three thirty-day trials. Mike Britt, Director of Maintenance and Engineering for UPS, states "Now we will operate these vehicles in the real world and help establish the future viability of this technology. EVI is aggressive at identifying and utilizing incentive funding to assist customers with fleet modernization employments." And how. The state of California is providing a $20,000 CARB rebate through the state's Hybrid Truck and Bus Initiative Project (HVIP).

UPS has long been improving its fleet. Remember UPS's composite-bodied CV23 truck? Testing of these lighter-bodied vehicles should conclude around December of this year. We'll keep you posted on whether these trucks did generate a forty percent increase in fuel efficiency over the UPS C70 diesel models. And last month's EVI-WI purchase not only serves to reduce consumption of oil, production of CO2 emissions, and noise pollution, as well as provide valuable data, but will also create "dozens" of clean-tech jobs in California.

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