BrightDrop’s EV Delivery Van Drops Record-Setting Single-Charge Mileage

Eventually, if they haven’t already, parcels may arrive at your door not in a rumbling, gas-powered delivery van, but in a totally electric vehicle such as BrightDrop’s Zevo 600 (formerly referred to as the EV600; the reasons for the name change are unclear). You might not be concerned with how your quick-ship garbage gets to your door as long as it gets there on time, but fleet managers will be very interested in the mechanics of that “how,” particularly as it relates to the rising class of electric delivery trucks. Maintenance expenses, efficiency, and purchase price are all extremely important considerations—as is downtime, which will be planned on a regular basis for an EV in order to allow it to recharge.

When Stephen Marlin went from New York City to Washington, D.C. in his BrightDrop Zevo 600, he set the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS® for the most distance driven by an electric van on a single charge, beating the previous record by more than 200 miles.

Which roughly corresponds to the mileage traveled by the Zevo 600, which just set a Guinness World Record for the most distance traveled in a single day. That’s a significant feat for a huge, boxy vehicle of significant size like this. However, it is also a bit of an obscure record for the time being, due to the fact that it has few challengers. Nonetheless, 258 miles (the actual distance traveled by the Zevo 600 on its voyage from New York City to Washington D.C., according to a BrightDrop spokesperson) should be sufficient for a significant proportion of urban and suburban daily journeys, we believe. In fact, given the amount of energy it could recuperate by braking on such limited routes that it was unlikely to get on its interstate journey from New York to Washington, it could probably travel even further on them.

BrightDrop has a partnership with FedEx, with the goal of supplying 2,500 of the electric vans to the delivery giant. As a result, the van with the world record is painted in the FedEx livery. There have been 25,000 reservations made, according to BrightDrops, and the Zevo 600 is already in production. The cargo space of the van has a capacity of 600 cubic feet and can accommodate 2,200 pounds of freight. The Zevo 400 is a smaller van that will be available later in the year.