UPS buying 10,000 electric delivery vans from startup Arrival and will test Waymo self-driving vehicles next month.
United Parcel Service Inc is expanding its efforts to cut emissions and delivery costs. In order to do that, they announced Wednesday two separate deals. UPS is investing in electric vehicle company Arrival and has signed an agreement to purchase 10,000 electric delivery trucks from UK-based Arrival Ltd and test Waymo self-driving vehicles to carry packages. UPS will partner with Waymo on an autonomous vehicle package pickup in Phoenix, Arizona.
UPS has tested a prototype of an earlier Arrival EV and will roll out more in cities such as London, where the company has installed a new charging infrastructure to handle a growing fleet of electric vehicles.
The partnership between UPS and Arrival includes a minority investment from the world’s biggest package delivery firm and appears four months after customer-turned-rival Amazon.com Inc, the world’s largest online retailer, ordered 100,000 electric vans from Michigan startup, Rivian, a partially funded by Amazon.
UPS and Arrival are also planning to co-develop electric vehicles with Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems technology designed “to increase safety and operating efficiencies” which is expected to be tested later this year, according to a recent release.
UPS also officially announced that next month they will start a six-month test run with Waymo. UPS will pay the self-driving unit of Google parent Alphabet Inc to use autonomous minivans, dubbed Chrysler Pacifica, to transport packages from Phoenix UPS stores to a nearby sorting center several times a day,
Online shopping is expected to grow by the end of the decade and experts say emissions from delivery trucks would grow by nearly a third. However, delivery EVs are at a tipping point: The technology is cheap enough that electric trucks can seriously compete with gas and diesel trucks and vans.
The two companies will also be co-developing electric vehicles with Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS) technology “designed to increase safety and operating efficiencies” — which is expected to be tested later this year, the release said.
According to MSN.
