By Josh Fisher and Catharine Conway, Fleet Owner magazine
With the acceleration of final-mile deliveries and the growing driver shortage, medium- and light-duty vehicles are finding a place in more fleets of all sizes. And after years of talk and projections, fleets will have plenty of real-world options to incorporate battery-electric powered vehicles into their operations over the next year.
Unlike their Class 7 and Class 8 big brothers, drivers don’t need a commercial driver’s license to operate these lighter class trucks and vans, opening up the worker pool. The growing last-mile local delivery industry has been one of the few booming subsections of the transportation and warehousing jobs market since the COVID-19 pandemic began. In 2020 alone, these final-mile jobs increased by more than 200,000.
“The wages tend not to be as much, but you get more home time, obviously, and also you have a lot less federal regulation to worry about,” Avery Vise, vice president of trucking at FTR Transportation Intelligence, said earlier this year.
The regional delivery and work models are also conducive to electric-powered fleet vehicles, which need a return-to-base model due to current battery limitations. At least 12 OEMs have plans to produce about 20 light- and medium-duty electric vehicles for fleet use over the next 18 months. These include pickup trucks, cargo vans, and larger vehicles.
The following gallery features the annual new models preview for light-duty vehicles from EC&M's sister publication, Fleet Owner magazine, that are due to hit the market in 2022.
To see the medium-duty models, click here.
To see the electric vehicle gallery, click here.
