The vans could potentially be on-road and in full operation as soon as 2023.
BrightDrop, a division of General Motors (GM), has secured more orders for the all-electric line of EV410 and EV600 delivery vans. Walmart specifically has reserved up to 5,000 of the vehicles in an announcement from the company on Wednesday. In a similar manner to FedEx, who received the initial portion of their 500 vehicle purchase at the end of 2021, Walmart is operating under the hope to fully automate their delivery fleet by the year 2040. Furthermore, it will be making use of said vehicles as a key integration with its InHome delivery business.
For 2022, the retailer plans to expand the service’s availability to as many as 30 million households in the United States by the end of the year. It estimates that the first vans purchased from BrightDrop will be on-road delivering goods as early as 2023.
In addition to this news, BrightDrop itself announced FedEx will be receiving a priority reserved production for up to 20,000 more electric vans over the next several years. The EV600, an all-wheel-drive, has exactly 600 cubic feet of storage space with the ability to travel more than 250 miles on one charge. Interior lighting that is motion-activated and auto-locking doors are included.
Fortunately for Walmart and other similar businesses, BrightDrop and GM do not represent the only companies that are providing electric vehicles to the largest parcel delivery companies on Earth. In 2020, some 10,000 EVs were ordered by FedEx from a company based in the United Kingdom (UK) known as Arrival. At the same time, Rivian, a transport startup, is manufacturing 100,000 delivery vans exclusively for Amazon.