UPS is testing these cartoon-like electric trucks on London roads

Alex Lee May 10, 2018

While it’s not the famed Pizza Planet truck that makes its way into every single Pixar film, UPS’ new cartoon-like electric trucks may as well be. With their cute, boxy design, the trucks are about to cruise out of Inside Out and onto the roads of London.

UPS is testing these cartoon-like electric trucks on London roads

In collaboration with UK-based vehicle manufacturer Arrival, UPS has announced that it will be trailing a fleet of 35 electric trucks, with zero tailpipe emissions, that have a much longer range than any of UPS’ electric trucks that have come before them.

Along with its high-tech exterior, the UPS electric trucks will also be futuristic on the inside too, coming “equipped with Advanced Driver Assistance”. Essentially, the trucks have intelligent designs like a wrap-around windshield and advanced driver systems that “help to improve safety” and “reduce driver fatigue.” They’re also going to last a lot longer too, having a massive range of 150 miles on a single charge.

Arrival is the first commercial vehicle manufacturer in Europe to build electric delivery vehicles for UPS, having worked with the company since 2016.

“We’re excited to collaborate with UPS to create an affordable, modular, fully-electric delivery vehicle designed to make delivery in our busy cities clean and quiet,” Denis Sverdlov, Arrival’s CEO said in a press statement. “With its unique wrap-around front window the driver has a much wider field of view that improves not only the safety of the driver, but also that of cyclists and pedestrians.”

These aren’t UPS’ first electric delivery trucks, in fact they’ve been building them since the 1930s, but they are the first to be built with such an unusual design. Last month, the company announced that it had installed new charging technology at its central London depot in Camden, allowing it to charge an entire fleet of electric vehicles without having to upgrade the power supply grid.

The fleet of 35 electric delivery trucks will be storming onto British roads by the end of 2018, joining the 300 other electric trucks and 700 hybrid trucks across Europe and the US.