All posts tagged: electric vans

Workhorse slashes prices by ,000 as Purolater buys 100 vans

Workhorse slashes prices by $60,000 as Purolater buys 100 vans

Published by skeptic

Commercial fleet operators scrambling to electrify in the face of rising diesel prices can buy a Workhorse W56 step van for nearly $60K less than before – and Ohio-based Purolator is taking advantage of the deal with a stout, 100-unit order. Electric fleet truck brand Workhorse first announced plans for a more affordable, 140 kWh version of its medium duty electric work truck last month. Now, the company is making the 210 kWh versions of its trucks more affordable, too, cutting $59,000 from its 178″ Standard Wheelbase and $61,000 from its 208″ Extended Wheelbase W56 vans through September. That’s a deal being made even sweeter by soaring gas and diesel prices – sweet enough, it seems, for Ohio-based delivery and logistics firm Purolator to place an order for 100 of the zero-emission box trucks. “Purolator has a longstanding commitment to adopting new and innovative technologies to make their fleet more efficient and sustainable, and we are honored to continue to support them,” said Scott Griffith, chief executive officer at Workhorse. “This is Purolator’s fourth order over a …

All-new electric Ford Transit City is ready to deliver big savings

All-new electric Ford Transit City is ready to deliver big savings

Published by skeptic

Designed with an eye towards helping cost-conscious contractors and delivery fleets, the all-new Ford Transit City electric van is the perfect tool to navigate the challenges of clean air zones, rapidly rising fuel costs, and increasingly strict neighborhood noise restrictions while still delivering for their customers. The electric Ford eTransit work van is a pretty well-known commodity, but the newest generation of Transit City vans from Ford Pro ditch both the “e” designation and the internal combustion options, following the new Toyota Highlander‘s lead and launching a whole new era of blue oval-branded commercial vehicles. Designed around a 56 kWh from its lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) battery sending power to a 110 kW (~150 hp) electric motor driving the front wheels, the new Ford Pro Transit City electric work trucks offer commercial customers range of up to 254 km (~160 miles). While not exactly impressive compared to today’s bladder-busting Lucid Air or China’s more advanced range-max EVs, 160 miles nevertheless works out to more than double the distance Ford Pro’s commercial customers report needing. Advertisement – …

Workhorse steps up with a more affordable electric step van

Workhorse steps up with a more affordable electric step van

Published by skeptic

Workhorse is once again pushing back on affordability concerns and high fuel prices with the introduction of a new, more affordable configuration of the company’s W56 Step Van electric delivery vehicle. A number of independent service and third-party logistics providers (ISPs and 3PLs) have consistently reported that 100 miles of daily range substantially exceeds their needs for many of their routes – and the 210 kWh battery pack fitted to the Workhorse W56 delivery van is serious overkill. That’s where the new, 140 kWh Workhorse comes in. Priced at “just” $169,000, the new 140 kWh W56 Step Van ships in the company’s “Standard” 178″ wheelbase configuration with Workhorse’s purpose-built composite body, and offers an estimated nominal range of 100 miles per charge at its full, 10,000 lb. payload capacity. “The new 140 kWh version of our W56 step van is a result of listening to customer feedback and purpose-building a product to meet their needs,” said Scott Griffith, CEO of Workhorse. “We’ve been able to balance the functional needs of fleets – range, durability, reliability and …

Workhorse electric van fleet hits the 20 MILLION MILE mark

Workhorse electric van fleet hits the 20 MILLION MILE mark

Published by skeptic

Workhorse and Motiv may not get headlines like the imaginary trucks from big T, but they’re doing the real work of electrification. Last week, the company’s commercial EV fleet crossed a major milestone logging their twenty millionth all-electric mile. (!) The new Workhorse Group formed after the $105 million merger of Workhorse and Motiv Electric Trucks late last year did a lot more than combine R&D and sales efforts, they combined their respective fleets’ collective miles driven, too – and their cumulative total of more than twenty million miles driven is made even more impressive when you realize that these are mostly last-mile delivery vans! “Twenty million miles is a significant threshold which reflects not only the quality and performance of our vehicles, but the trust that our many repeat customers have placed in Workhorse. This achievement reinforces the view that medium-duty is the sweet spot for electrification,” said Scott Griffith, CEO of Workhorse. “Every day our vehicles safely and reliably transport the goods, packages, and people that are the lifeblood of our economy, all with zero …

VW Sportline is the electric GTi the ID.Buzz SHOULD have been

VW Sportline is the electric GTi the ID.Buzz SHOULD have been

Published by skeptic

VW have finally built the van enthusiasts have been asking — and it’s not the ID.Buzz. Meet the new e-Transporter Sportline, the retro-tastic people-mover with GTI-inspired styling, a proper performance attitude, and room for seven that VW should have been building all along. Volkswagen was on the right track when they decided to market the premium-priced ID.Buzz as a nostalgia play, they just targeted the wrong demographic. It’s not the aging Boomers, but the Gen-Xers and elder Millenials who are spending big money on vans these days — and, to us, VW isn’t about Beetles and Buses. It’s about high-strung GTis, Sciroccos, and Corrados. This Transporter Sportline? This is the way. As far as the van itself goes, the e-Transporter van packs a 210 kW (~280 hp) electric motor with gobs of low-end torque for convincingly GTi-levels of straight-line acceleration. That motor is efficient enough, too, to take you and six friends nearly 200 miles on its relatively small 64 kWh battery, pairing real-world range with the kind of interior space VW enthusiasts have been …

The electric minivan Dodge needs already exists – just not here

The electric minivan Dodge needs already exists – just not here

Published by skeptic

Last week, I argued that Dodge was wasting its time building muscle cars and hiring “badassadors,” and that what the brand needed to change its fortunes was a new electric minivan. That van already exists. Meet the Leapmotor D99. The new D99 electric people-mover from the Stellantis-backed Leapmotor brand made its debut last week at Leapmotor’s 10th anniversary bash as a BEV packing a 115 kWh battery and 720 km (~450 miles) of range on the WLTP cycle. That battery might be newsworthy, on its own, too. One of the latest new offerings from Chinese battery experts CATL, the new Leapmotor van’s battery pack is built on a 1000-volt high-voltage electrical system that promises both ultra-fast charging and reduced losses for better overall energy efficiency. Driving the new D99 should be nice enough, but when you need it (or just can’t be bothered), an advanced ADAS powered by a pair of Qualcomm Snapdragon 8797 delivering some 1280 TOPS of computational power and supporting VLA (Visual-Language-Action) large language models can step in to keep you and …

Dodge dealers don’t need a Charger — they need a Caravan

Dodge dealers don’t need a Charger — they need a Caravan

Published by skeptic

If the market failures of the Dodge Charger Daytona and VW ID.Buzz have proved anything at all, it’s that the Baby Boomer era is over, and their kids — GenX and Millenials alike — aren’t willing to pay a premium for a vehicle that looks like something their dad once thought was cool. As GenX becomes the largest and richest new car-buying demographic, manufacturers need to find out what they are nostalgic about. To that end, I propose the following nostalgia play: the “Goonies Never Say Die” edition 2027 Dodge Caravan BEV. If you’re under a certain age, you’ll have to just believe me when I tell you that all sorts of great memories were hatched in the back of the K-based OG Dodge Caravan, both as young kids and as teens — and these economical, practical, and generally fun to be driven in (if not to drive) minivans were absolutely everywhere in the late 1980s and early ’90s. It’s easy to understand why. With small-ish engines and unibody construction, they offered a much more …