UPS revs up electric truck testing

Six-month trial of Thor Trucks’ delivery vehicle will be conducted to determine its long-term suitability.    UPS Inc. is partnering with Thor Trucks Inc. to test the latter’s fully electric class 6 delivery truck.
   The Atlanta-based parcel carrier said in a statement it will deploy Thor’s vehicle in a six-month trial in the Los Angeles area sometime later this year in an effort to determine whether the truck is suitable for long-term use in its fleet.
   Powered entirely by a lightweight, durable battery engine, the Thor electric delivery truck will have a driving range of roughly 100 miles. UPS will conduct its trials both on and off road to evaluate the vehicle’s durability, battery capacity, technical integration, engineering and any other issues that might crop during testing.
   The tests are part of UPS’ “Rolling Laboratory” initiative, under which the company deploys multiple types of low-emissions vehicles — all-electric, hybrid electric, hydraulic hybrid, ethanol, compressed natural gas (CNG), liquefied natural gas (LNG) and propane — in order to determine which technology is best suited for each of the company’s various service route and region.
   UPS already operates more than 9,000 alternative-fuel vehicles, one of the largest such fleets in the U.S., and has said previously it aims to “make the new electric vehicles a standard selection, where appropriate, in its fleet of the future.”
   The company in February placed an order for 50 plug-in electric class 5 trucks from Workhorse Group Inc., shortly after pre-ordering 125 of Tesla’s new fully-electric semi tractors. And last September, UPS announced it will become the first commercial customer in the U.S. to start using the eCanter medium-duty electric trucks from Daimler Trucks’ Fuso brand.
   “UPS believes in the future of commercial electric vehicles. We want to support the research needed to make advances and the companies developing those innovative products,” Carlton Rose, president, global fleet maintenance and engineering for UPS, said of the partnership with Thor Trucks. “Performance is critical in our fleet. We are excited to get this vehicle on the road to test how it handles routes in and around Los Angeles.”
   Thor Trucks co-founder and CEO Dakota Semler said the collaboration, a first for the company, provides “an incredibly valuable opportunity to gain insight into what it will take to fulfill our mission of getting entire electric fleets on the road.”