In a September press release, UPS announced plans to unveil a “groundbreaking, range extended electric vehicle” for use in UK tests. According to UPS: “Since June 2014, UPS has worked with TEVVA Motors to develop a prototype, as part of UPS’s growing investment in alternative fuel and advanced technology vehicles. A small, highly efficient diesel engine acts as a generator to recharge the batteries if they become depleted out on the road. This significantly increases the range of the vehicle, potentially by several hundred kilometres, on top of its normal range of 75km to 100 km without range extension.” The use of sustainable disruptive technology of this kind is going to be increasingly common, and in large part it originates with Tesla.
Tesla’s recent breakthroughs and the decreasing costs of long range batteries through the company’s work are drastically altering corporate and public expectations about green automobiles. Their tax breaks in the state of California have, in large part, allowed for this kind of influential innovation.
By stepping up and utilizing — or at least testing with a plan to utilize — this green technology across a wide-spread global supply chain, UPS is truly making a point of becoming a leader. Its leadership exists not only within the more specific industry of transporting goods; indeed, it leads by example in embracing disruptive technology early on in order to adapt, build infrastructure, and reap the benefits of increasing efficiency.
For California, at least, this will not be unique, given Governor Jerry Brown’s new rules enforcing sustainability. But UPS’s move recognizes (and encourages organizations across global supply chains to realize) that such technology and its environmental and financial benefits are neither a local or national issue. In this global economy, they are worldwide.
UPS is truly making a point to become a leader to participate in reducing carbon foot print. Governor Jerry Brown passing of recent carbon emission bill will force every company to start to focus on this issue and UPS is certainly leading the change.