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ducleonctor

For once, mighty Amazon comes late to the show.

Germany's parcel service DHL builds up a fleet of small electric delivery vans since 2014:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter

Living in Bavaria, I see these drive around everywhere now.

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I remember the fury of one of the top VW executives when he discovered that DHL developed their own vehicles instead of hiring VW to do that.

Good for DHL. I would buy such a thing if they sold them to consumers.

I've heard that DHL urged VW and Mercedes for years to develop e-delivery trucks, but both manufacturers did not show any interest. It was kind of last resort to search for partner and start a joint venture to build those trucks.

Germany's parcel service DHL builds up a fleet of small electric delivery vans since 2014

In Chicago, FedEx has had electric delivery vans since at least 2005.

I saw a UPS truck in Nevada last month that I thought was a regular UPS truck until it sped away almost silently. I guess UPS has been converting its fleet, but I don't know for how long..

UPS has had hybrid trucks here in Phoenix for quite a few years; I haven't seen any fully electric ones yet, but I'm not really looking, either.

I've seen frito-lay driving electric delivery trucks driving around for years as well. I do not recall the brand.

be more German

These seem like they'd never work in the US. They aren't fast enough to go on the highway and their range is limited to 62 miles.

There are urban parts of the US where some delivery trucks never go on the highway and don't drive that far in a day.

There are also parts of Germany where delivery trucks need to be able to go on the highway and to drive farther than 62 miles.

These trucks are solving the "last mile" delivery. Do you see many USPS delivery vans on the highway? That's the market.

In a dense urban environment, 62 miles is still less than most delivery trucks drive. In the US, the actual average overall is more like 2-3x that.

All the time. That being said, it is Seattle so I-5 isn't usually moving at 50 mph anyway :)

this quora question has some good answers. Rural routes could be 150, urban routes could be as low as 5 miles but more typically around 60-80

https://www.quora.com/How-many-miles-per-day-does-a-FedEx-or...

The US has cities, I believe.

Do you have any sources to back up this claim?

But even those tend to have much lower population density than European cities. In Europe (and especially Germany where this was developed), large parts of cities consist of multi-family homes with a high population density. Those make up a much smaller part of cities in the US.

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