Electric truck professional Motiv Power Systems has landed a seven-car settlement with the U.S. Postal Service. The first of Class 4 medium-duty trucks commenced carrier overdue final yr. The remainder will be delivered over the following weeks, Jim Castelaz, Motiv’s founder and chief govt, instructed Trucks.Com. The contract is part of the Postal Service’s ongoing trial of 0-emissions automobiles as it works to lower operating costs and decrease its huge car fleet’s emissions footprint.
It is a pilot venture calling for a one-yr test of the battery-electric powered step vans. If the trucks live up to their promise, Motiv could be in line for additional commercial enterprise with the Postal Service and private shipping services seeking cleaner, more green motors for their fleets.
SYMBOLIC VALUE
“It is simply seven cars now, but its symbolic price is massive,” IHS Markit trucking industry analyst Antti Lindstrom advised Trucks.Com. “It is a validation of what they may be doing, and it may be a terrific door opener for them,” Lindstrom stated. Potential competition Chanje Energy and Workhorse Group have already made inroads inside the business delivery enterprise with their all-electric powered step trucks. Workhorse promotes Class Three medium-obligation vans to UPS, and Chanje just landed a 1,000-automobile order with Fed Ex for its Class Five medium-obligation van.
Workhorse is also part of a group with VT Hackney, a commercial truck and van body manufacturer, bidding on constructing the following-generation mail shipping truck. The team is one of five competing to accumulate one hundred eighty 000 new mail vans. The contract is worth up to $6.3 billion over five years. The Postal Service is inside the very last levels of comparing prototypes for the truck and could award the agreement later this year. The Motiv truck could be bigger and complement the usual mail truck fleet.
COST-SAVINGS CLAIMS
Motiv claims its proprietary electric pressure system for medium-duty vehicles can shave gasoline costs up to eighty-five percent and recurring upkeep expenses through up to sixty-six percent instead of a gasoline or diesel truck, van, or small bus. The Foster City, Calif., agency, based in 2009, isn’t a newcomer – it’s been selling its electric-powered chassis to the diffusion of customers, together with the AmeriPride linen and uniform provider, for several years.
Collectively, medium-duty trucks, go back and forth buses and trucks using the organization’s EPIC-branded chassis have logged more than 500,000 miles in “real global” use, Castelaz said. Vehicles using a Motiv chassis can cost 30 percent more than conventionally powered fashions. But the decreased running price, coupled with numerous incentives in California and several other states, can make the payback length just barely more than years, Castelaz said.
Motiv supplies seven EPIC chassis, primarily based on the Ford E-450 chassis but ready with electric-powered vehicles, rechargeable battery packs, and complicated power and battery management structures for the U.S. Postal Service contract. The chassis could be equipped with van bodies using Michigan-primarily based truck body builder Morgan Olson – another bidder, with Karsan Otomotiv of Turkey, for the mail truck settlement.
70-MILE RANGE
The Motiv machine for the postal trucks is designed to provide at least 70 miles of range in keeping with a fee. That’s nicely within a mail truck’s normal day-by-day workload, turning in parcels and applications to residential and industrial addresses. The program was funded with a supply from the California Air Resources Board. The board’s clean-transportation programs are financed with proceeds from the country’s carbon emissions cap-and-change program.
The electric postal vehicles will be deployed inside Fresno and Stockton’s towns in California’s Central Valley, an area with some of the kingdom’s worst air pollutants. The goal is to decide whether or not the electrical van chassis meet the Postal Service’s dreams of a per-van annual savings of $4,000-$6,000 in gas expenses and 37 metric tons in greenhouse gas emissions as opposed to an identical-length diesel van, Castelaz stated. Since 2001, the USPS has operated 30 electric two-ton automobiles on the streets of New York City. These have been later joined through a pair of two-ton hybrid electric-powered cars in Long Island.
