GM is getting into the logistics business like shipping and stuff.
As part of its CES news Bonanza, the Detroit based automaker introduced bright drop and at its core this business unit is designed to help delivery and service companies do more with less Drawing on its experience building electric vehicles, GM will offer several products for commercial customers, including an all electric delivery van, a motorized pallet More on that in a minute, plenty of software and services to tie all of this together, but an automaker getting into the logistics business seems well at first glance kind of random.
I mean Why don't they just start building say consumer electronics or even footwear?
Now, actually though this isn't quite the non sequitur, it initially sounds like.
For starters, GM has plenty of experience building electric vehicles, but it also sees enormous growth potential in the logistics business get this by 2025 The automaker estimates, the combined market for food and parcel delivery will grow to 850 billion billion with a B dollars in just the US.
Additionally, by 2030, GM expects urban delivery traffic to swell by 78% with a big increase in the number of commercial vehicles out there.
So clearly there's an opportunity here.
One that rivals have identified as well.
I mean, Ford has the upcoming e transit electric van.
There's also Lordstown motors, Tesla, rivian and others.
They all want a slice of that logistics pie.
Right drops new commercial van is called the EV 600 with ultium batteries on boarded promises and electric only driving range of up to 250 miles.
Trouncing that e-transit, which maxes out at just 126.
When hooked to a 120 kilowatt DC fast charger, it can absorb 170 miles of range in just an hour, as its name suggests, The av 600 offers 600 cubic feet of cargo space inside and that's about four times more than you get in a Chevy Suburban, which is a big SUV.
There's also plenty of standard or available tech including stuff like parking sensors, automatic high beams and even rear cross traffic alert.
Another product bright drop will offer is the EP one propulsion assistant pallet.
Basically it's a box on wheels you put stuff in.
It's designed to help delivery and logistics companies more efficiently move stuff short distances, say from the back of a truck up to a customer's front door.
It prevents couriers from having to make multiple trips or strain themselves.
With the wheel hub motor the EP one can move itself along at up to three miles per hour or however slowly its human controller is shuffling along.
Now it has 23 cubic feet of space inside.
That's much less than a suburban though it can hold up to 200 pounds of goods.
Thanks to a cloud based software platform customers can manage their EV 600 and EP one fleets, track vehicle locations, monitor battery charge status.
And even push out over the air Software updates.
The bright drop EV600 launch is this year with FedEx snatching up the first 500 examples.
Additional customers will be able to get their hands on them starting in early 2022.
As for the EP1, it will also be available this year.
Now pricing and purchase information along with a whole bunch of other details about none of that has been released just yet.
So stay tuned for a lot more news about bright drop.
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