Amazon delivers in two minutes
On Tuesday, Amazon revealed the launch of its new ‘Instant Pickup’ service allowing shoppers to collect orders in a matter of minutes from a select few college campuses across the U.S. One location will be at the University of California at Berkeley. However, Amazon plans to add more locations to the scheme by the end of this year.
Customers can use the Amazon mobile app to place an order from a choice of over one hundred fast-selling items at each location, ranging from drinks and snacks to electronic accessories like phone chargers. Within two minutes, the employees at Amazon put the orders in assigned lockers. Then customers are sent bar codes to open them and retrieve their ordered items. Products can be added during the pickup stage, if necessary. This new service pursues impulse buyers and means Amazon is in direct competition with vending machines.
More information on this pickup service can be found here.
eHighway reaches German Autobahn
On Wednesday, Siemens announced its plans to install an eHighway system powered by electricity on the German Autobahn. After a successful test run in Sweden, this system is already running on 2km of road near Stockholm. As a result, the German engineering company intends to equip 10km of the Autobahn near Frankfurt with the eHighway scheme.
The system involves overhead electricity cables on one lane of the highway, where hybrid trucks can extract power over the course of their journey. However, the trucks must run on diesel for the start and end point of the drive and also where power lines don’t exist, for example on smaller roads. The hybrid trucks are connected to the electric cables above the highway through an extendable power coupler, which is situated on the top of the truck. This power connection can be detached and the trucks can briefly use diesel to overtake other vehicles. With this, the trucks can return and reattach to the eHighway lane without any hassle.
To read more about the eHighway, click here.
New StreetScooter models are now roaming the streets
This week, a new electric delivery van model was revealed in Cologne. The StreetScooter WORK XL is the first result of a collaboration project between Deutsche Post DHL Group and Ford. This partnership will create the largest production of environmentally friendly e-vans in Europe. StreetScooter GmbH is a subsidiary of DHL. Therefore, the rest of the fleet – approximately 150 models, will be manufactured in its factory in Aachen over the remainder of this year. Furthermore, the manufacturing volume will hopefully increase to 2,500 by the end of 2018.
The delivery vehicles have been designed to specifically suit DHL, but they could possibly be sold to third-party customers as well. The latest model is assembled with a Ford Transit framework and features a modular battery system with a charging time of around three hours. Each delivery van can hold more than 200 packages and they can drive between 80km to 200km before the battery needs charging.
To find out more about the StreetScooter WORK XL click here.
Have a great weekend!
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[…] you can see from my last wrap-up, electric vehicles are in the forefront of the automotive industry. This week, the Royal Mail […]
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