John Cail, Senior VP of Mobility, Provides Merchants’ Perspective on Fleet EVs, Last-Mile Delivery
By Ed Pierce, Contributing Editor
Although Merchants has recently announced a spate of electric vehicle-related announcements, Senior Vice President of Mobility, John Cail, explains that the news is the result of the company’s ongoing electric vehicle initiative.
“We’ve been building our electric vehicle strategy for some time, including electrified vehicle fleet management services, charging, OEM relationships, and more.
“Merchants is developing and implementing EV strategies because we foresee that’s where our clients are migrating,” he adds. “We are building out our ecosystem of partners and are ahead of the curve and will remain out in front in order to offer our clients the best possible outcomes.”
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Push to Electrify Mail Trucks Gains Wide Support, an Unlikely Win for Both DeJoy and Biden
House Democratic leaders are lining up behind a White House push to allocate $8 billion in taxpayer funding for the latest iteration of mail truck, paving the way for a fully electric fleet instead of the piecemeal strategy U.S. Postal Service leaders have been pursuing.
The agency, which is generally self-sustaining and does not draw public money, has drawn up a bootstrap plan for new vehicles — the vast majority of which would run on gas — as it wrestles with $188.4 billion in liabilities and faces years of projected losses. The lawmakers’ plan would relieve the agency of the truck expense while significantly advancing one of President Biden’s key sustainability objectives.
But Postmaster General Louis DeJoy had told lawmakers the agency couldn’t afford to make a bigger EV commitment — charging stations and other infrastructure would tack another $2 billion to the cost — or wait until it could.
Read the article at The Washington Post.
New Government Guidance to Combat Terror Attacks Using Vehicles
The standard, developed by the British Standards Institution (BSI) and sponsored by the Department for Transport, is intended to prevent criminals and terrorists from accessing commercial vehicles.
Vehicles have been targeted for use in attacks on the public in recent years, including in the Westminster and London Bridge attacks of 2017. The new guidance is designed to minimize the risk of similar tragic events from happening again and encourages commercial vehicle operators to improve knowledge of potential risks and develop rigorous security plans.
Other requirements will include checks of drivers’ references and previous employment history and also regular visual checks of vehicles for signs of tampering. To support this, the Government is working with the industry to develop accreditation and certification schemes for commercial vehicle firms, with further details to be announced in due course.
Read the article at Fleetworld.
