UPS, AT&T Announce Green Fleet Additions

UPS is purchasing 100 fully electric commercial delivery vehicles from Electric Vehicles International.

The class 6 walk-in delivery trucks with a 90-mile range (pictured) will be placed in service early next year in California’s South Coast Air Basin, San Joaquin Valley and Sacramento Valley.

This purchase marks the largest deployment of zero emission delivery vehicles in California, and one of the largest single deployments of commercial all-electric vehicles in the world, EVI says. It estimates that the vehicles should save UPS 126,000 gallons of fuel a year.

In related news, AT&T has announced the deployment of the 4,000th alternative-fuel vehicle in its corporate vehicle fleet. The AFV, a Ford E250 van running on compressed natural gas, was deployed in Chicago.

Currently, 3,000 of the company’s AFVs use compressed natural gas. Half of all of AT&T’s AFVs are deployed in California, the company says.

AT&T is planning to invest $565 million over 10 years to replace approximately 15,000 fleet vehicles with alternative-fuel models by 2018.

In April this year, AT&T, UPS, FedEx, PepsiCo and Verizon signed up as charter members of the National Clean Fleets Partnership. The White House initiative led by the Department of Energy aims to encourage AFV use and help large fleets across the country cut petroleum use by 2.5 billion gallons by 2020.