The surprise is great: in front of the new “eQuad”, the vehicle for deliveries in urban areas just presented by UPS, the mind immediately runs to our Apecar: in an era of ever larger electric vans, including the one that Amazon has commissioned to Rivian, comes someone who “thinks small”. In fact, the Ups eQuad has a maximum speed of 25 kilometers per hour and is in fact a pedal-assisted van, so if you pedal hard you can go faster, and it can carry up to 200 kilograms of packages. Its electric battery has a range of 64 km, more than adequate for urban journeys. The wheels, very small in order not to steal space from the load compartment, are 4, but the trick lies in the fact that the rear ones have a narrow track (the distance between one rim and the other): this is how the eQuad manages in practice to turn on itself, without having the criticalities in terms of stability of three-wheeled vehicles.
eQuad, the Ups electric quadricycle for city deliveries
In short, after over 70 years someone proposes something very similar to our “bee” which has an incredible turning circle of 6 meters (turns on itself), slips almost everywhere and then manages to transport objects for a volume up to 1, 5 cubic meters. Yet this Piaggio three-wheeler – which can already be driven at the age of 14 – is a 2.6 meter long microbe with a 2-stroke engine of just 2.5 horsepower but manages to carry 205 kg on its back as if nothing had happened. Other times, today if you talk about a two-stroke engine you pass for delinquent, but with the electric motor everything becomes current again.
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In short, the road is marked and the parcel delivery giant Ups has now decided to focus on smaller and more manageable vehicles: it is no coincidence that in addition to the eQuad, the company is testing about 100 different electric bicycles, designed and built for deliveries to domicile, which will be used – after the trial period – in all European markets. For the small four-wheeler, on the other hand, it starts immediately: in London the eQuad enters service as early as April.
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All this not only to reduce emissions and pollution because small and light vehicles give transporters an enormous advantage: once they arrive at their destination they do not have to waste time parking. In fact, from some UPS studies it seems that their messengers waste 30 percent of their time looking for a parking space once they arrive at their destination. And then the eQuad and then the electric bikes will cut costs and delivery times of packages. This is why, in the wake of UPS, rivals FedEx and DHL are also experimenting with similar vehicles: the challenge is launched.
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