It wasn’t that long ago that there were no electric delivery trucks anywhere in the world. Then in 2010, Achim Kampker and Günther Schuh formed a small electric truck startup called StreetScooter in Aachen, Germany. In 2014, the company was purchased by Deutsche Post, one of the largest delivery companies in the world.
Since then Deutsche Post, also known as DHL in many world markets, has begun mass production of a range of electric trucks at two factories in Europe with the intention of replacing all 70,000 vehicles in its global fleet with electric trucks. It also began selling the trucks to other companies.
In September of this year, StreetScooter announced a joint manufacturing agreement with Chery, a Chinese automaker. The joint venture plans to produce up to 100,000 vehicles per year by 2021. It also announced that is looking to sell its business or form a partnership with another company in an effort to make its manufacturing business profitable.
Image courtesy of StreetScooter
This week, StreetScooter introduced its latest models, which have updated styling and larger cargo boxes. The new Work and Work L trucks have a top speed of 72 mph and are safer and more comfortable. An upgraded 11 kW on board charger allows the trucks to reach an 80% charge in about five hours. The company says it intends to manufacture electric delivery trucks in the United States and is in talks to sell them to several large US fleet operators, beginning with DHL Express.
“StreetScooter is a well-known ‘early bird’ in the electric light commercial vehicle sector,” CEO Jörg Sommer tells CleanTechnica in an email. “Years of experience and more than 100 million kilometers on the road have shown us what’s important in tough delivery traffic and last-mile logistics. We have incorporated those insights into a new design for our success models, the WORK and WORK L. The results speak for themselves: optimal operational equipment for environmentally conscious fleet customers.”
The company has added two new executives to help manage and grow its international business. Peter Bardenfleth-Hansen was previously an executive at Tesla where he helped develop key markets in Norway, Japan, and the Middle East. “Joining StreetScooter is in many ways my ideal progression in a quest to change the heart of mobility from fossil fuels to renewables. It was necessary to start that revolution by electrifying personal mobility but the real difference will not happen until the transportation of goods is 100% sustainable and particle pollution is out of our cities.” He will be responsible for building an international sales organization.
Ulrich Stuhec will be the new chief technical officer for the company. He has an extensive background in auto manufacturing including the development of autonomous vehicles at Ford and has been a manufacturing consultant to BMW. “I look forward to working with the StreetScooter engineering team to develop new products and fine-tune existing vehicle programs, to integrate leading-edge technologies and to help shape the company’s amazing growth with the outstanding management team,” Stuhec says.
Trucks have much higher carbon and particulate emissions than passenger vehicles. The sooner they are electrified, the better for the environment.
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