General Motors has signed Merchants Fleet on as the second major customer of its new BrightDrop ecosystem of last-mile delivery solutions.
The first 500 examples of the new BrightDrop EV600 delivery van will go to FedEx, GM announced previously. Merchants Fleet will actually be the biggest initial buyer of the BrightDrop EV600, however, placing an order for 12,600 examples of the battery-electric delivery van. BrightDrop President and CEO Travis Katz says that “Merchants Fleet’s move to add such a large number of BrightDrop EV600s to their portfolio signals their strong commitment to accelerate the electric fleet movement,” and hopes that his company’s logistics solutions will help it reduce its carbon footprint going forward.
“We are proud to be the first fleet management company to work with BrightDrop, the innovative and vital new solution from GM,” added Brendan P. Keegan, CEO of Merchants Fleet. “Merchants Fleet is fully committed to the future of electrification, and working to add BrightDrop EV600s to our clients’ fleets is an exciting part of our broader strategy. We look forward to continuing to expand our EV fleet capabilities to provide our clients with a range of electric vehicle services and solutions to meet their evolving needs.”
The BrightDrop EV600 is a fully electric delivery van that is powered by GM’s new Ultium Drive electric motors and Ultium lithium-ion batteries. The van has over 600 cubic feet of cargo area and an estimated range of 250 miles. It will enter limited production at the GM CAMI Assembly plant in Ontario later this year, with full series production set to begin in early 2022. The first 500 examples of the EV600 will go to FedEx, with Merchants Fleet expected to receive its first vehicles in early 2023.
In a statement, Merchants Fleets said it is aiming to convert 50% of its mobility fleet portfolio to electric by 2025, while 50% of its managed fleet portfolio will be battery-powered by 2030. The company provides fleet management and fleet leasing solutions to businesses and government agencies.
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Comments
Unions supported obama now they won’t have a job when biden/barra EV robots take over.
You are true unprogressive. If people like you had prevailed we would be stuck in underdeveloped, backward world. You want total static society, no change at all. That’s why you’re trying to mislead people with false fear.
One thing is sure the change is inevitable, you can’t resist it. When the time comes lumberjacks lose their jobs and people turn being coal miners after awhile it starts to fade then here comes oil jobs and eventually it had its day and now renewable energy related technicians and workers needed.
You act like world is created as it is. The society and work environments constantly change. People like you tried to resist to typograph. They said thousand of people will lose their job if this one machine able to write a book much much faster than a human. And they were right, but look where we are now as humanity! Printing triggered spread of knowledge across Europe and sparked the scientific revolution and the modern world as we know, and billions of jobs.
This anti EV arguments keep getting weaker and weaker now it comes to robots! You know what, maybe robots are not coming from magical robot world and actually they need some engineers and workers to build them! Last time i checked trendy argument was EVs are expensive, now this. But after laying out their argument their solution is “so we should stop any EV development and support coal and burn oil to run our state of the art cars that full of electronics that need 48v dc that can’t be produced through 12v outdated weak lead acid battery!” They want bigger LCD screens and every kind of sensors , faster car infotainments, and other new toys in their cars but don’t want an electric motor power them, go figure!!
They supposedly want cheaper cars but it’s the same crowd first to pick on cheap cars and knocking car makers like GM for not making cars with more luxurious fancy interiors to compete expensive german cars. Hundred years ago automobile was much much much more expensive than horse, and what’s more you didn’t have proper roads for cars, no oil stations, no infrastructure at all. But less than a decade millions of automobile begun to roam the streets, of course with zero traffic rules. Some people complained lost of horse related jobs ,and got a fright from the unknown this new tech would bring. It sounds familiar to you? Maybe. New tech and products go mass production and the cost suddenly drops, we as a generation experienced this first hand with computer and internet revolution. I believe in less than five years EVs will be cheaper than ICE cars after enough mass production achieved.
Actually work for typesetters who then became Linotype operators increased after its invention since the equation was changed from minutes per line to Lines per Minute. This vast productivity increase – increased the demand for typesetters, since now their cost was a small fraction of what it was prior. Anyone who is interested can view ‘Linotype Machine’ on Wikipedia dot org, partially authored by Yours Truly.
It so reduced the cost of copy composition that Newspapers ballooned in size from their formerly 8 pages.
Likewise, Electric vehicle modernization will come – I’m just not sure the Biden Administration’s way will be the answer..
The keystone XL union who advocated Biden votes now has their members out of a job – besides pissed off Canadians who THOUGHT they were making a big sale of Crude.
BrightDrop was a Genius move by Barra and the team. Great job GM.
This will make them stupid money going forward.
Exactly, this is just the beginning. If companies like Ford doesn’t hurry up ,they will lose all their van business to GM and other EV van makers. No business owner can say no to this offer. We’re talking about millions of vehicles.
The allure of EVs is low cost of operation. No oil changes. No transmission to service (or replace if one drives a Nissan with a CVT lol). No water pumps, alternators, drive belts…ICE engines are incredibly complex. GM has to sell the private market on the cost advantage of EVs. Once they do prices will drop and lead to the snowball that put a personal computer on everyone’s desk in homes and offices in the early nineties and later in the last decade smartphones in everyone’s hands. It’s inevitable and it’s going to come. And it will put a great chunk of the automobile aftermarket and service industry out of business. No more Jiffy lubes, no more Grease Monkey oil change centers. it will take a decade or so but you’ll eventually start to see auto parts stores go away as well as the demand for mufflers, replacement alternators and water pumps and air filters and all of the things tied to running a combustion engine and a car or a truck there’s no longer needed. They will still be brakes and tires to replace but it will all get a lot cheaper. It’ll be a similar revolution too what happened when the automobile took over from the horse and buggy or after World War i. Or, when the internet finally took over and streaming services ate the lunch of Blockbuster Video and is killing the cable tv industry by robbing it of it’s channel bundling profits. I for one, cannot wait for it.