Ford Europe and StreetScooter team up to build an electric cargo truck
The StreetScooter Work XL has the body of a Ford Transit and the electric guts of a StreetScooter van.
Ford is getting into the electric work-vehicle game in a big way in Germany thanks to tech from the DeutschePost startup StreetScooter. Ford's Turkey-built Transit van is the basis for the StreetScooter Work XL, a kind of a small-to-medium-size box van that will initially be sold to DHL. The van went into production Tuesday.
The StreetScooter Work XL will be assembled in Cologne, Germany, at Ford's European headquarters, according to Automotive News Europe, with a planned production capacity of around 3,500 vehicles per year.
"With Ford, we have found the ideal partner who understands our flexible and customer-oriented way of production," Achim Kampker, CEO and founder of StreetScooter, said in a statement Tuesday. "Together, we are promoting electromobility in Germany and making inner‑city delivery traffic more environmentally friendly and quieter. With the new Work XL StreetScooter, we now have the perfect e-van for parcel delivery in metropolitan areas, which in the future will also benefit other transport companies."
Ford will equip the Work XL with a 122-horsepower electric motor that also produces 202 pound-feet of torque. The van's 76 kilowatt-hour battery pack will be good for an estimated 124 miles of range. Ford forecasts that each StreetScooter Work XL will reduce carbon emissions by 5.5 tons and save approximately 500 gallons of diesel fuel per year.
StreetScooter will go on building its smaller electric vans, like the ones Daimler attempted to make off with earlier this year.
