BrightDrop, Common Motors’ electrical industrial automobile enterprise unit started deliveries of its first product, the Zevo 600 supply van in December, 2021 simply 20 months after launching product growth. The primary batch of vans had been delivered to a Fedex depot in California. Just lately a Fedex driver set a Guinness world file by driving a Zevo 600 practically 260 miles to make a supply.
The Zevo 600 (previously often called the EV600) is a supply van with a capability of 600 cubic toes and a claimed vary of 250 miles. It’s constructed utilizing the identical Ultium batteries and electrical propulsion system as GM’s different new technology electrical autos such because the GMC Hummer EV and Cadillac Lyriq. When it was introduced in January 2021, Fedex was recognized as the primary buyer with an order for 500 items. The primary 150 vans are all being deployed throughout southern California the place they’ll have some firm on the roads from Amazon’s check fleet of Rivian electrical vans.
BrightDrop took one in every of its vans to the New York space which was the origin level for BrightDrop worker Stephen Marlin. That van was loaded up with sustainable cleansing merchandise from New York Metropolis-based Full Circle. Marlin drove the van MOM’s Natural Market in Washington D.C. with a few stops at landmarks in Baltimore and Philadelphia to seize content material. The entire journey took roughly six hours with a mixture of metropolis and freeway driving.
That is an atypical kind of journey for this fashion of van which usually operates solely in native areas, nevertheless it did show the vary functionality of the Zevo 600. The quoted 250 mile vary is about double what opponents just like the Rivian and Ford e-Transit supply. In accordance with Ford, 90% of economic Transit customers drive lower than 76 miles per day. Whereas the standard BrightDrop use case will most likely be related, the additional battery vary does present flexibility to make sure it has sufficient usable vary to assist options like air-con in extremely popular climates and heating when working in winter months.
The primary batch of Zevo 600s is being hand-built at a facility in Michigan whereas GM’s meeting plant in Ingersoll, Ontario is being retooled. That plant which at the moment builds the Chevrolet Equinox and GMC Terrain must be constructing the Zevo 600 by the tip of 2022. The smaller Zevo 400 will comply with it in 2023.
Replace: Textual content was revised to make clear that Fedex isn’t at the moment deploying BrightDrop vans in New York and Stephen Marlin is an worker of BrightDrop, not Fedex.