Modec truck looks great in UPS brown
Since the first moment I laid eyes on it, I've thought the Modec electric truck was a thing of beauty. A little more aerodynamic than its freight hauling frères and a whole lot more quiet. Need I mention the lack of diesel smoke? I thought not. After reading all the specs and mulling it over for about 10 seconds it occurred to me that this vehicle would look great in UPS brown. Sure enough, it does.
According to BigLorryBlog, the company has begun putting the Modec (they really do need a catchy model name) through its paces within the London Low Emission Zone. So what does UPS think about this big brown truck? "The quiet, carbon-neutral vehicle is the first of its kind to effectively harness the power of modern, high energy batteries to meet the medium range, high performance requirements of hard working, urban delivery vehicles." I think, as with Tesco, they like it, they like it!
[Source: BigLorryBlog via TNN via Green Car Congress]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Gary Reysa 9:04PM (3/08/2008)
"The quiet, carbon-neutral vehicle is the first of its kind to effectively harness the power of modern, high energy batteries to meet the medium range, high performance requirements of hard working, urban delivery vehicles."
Carbon-neutral? How do they charge the batteries?
Gary
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Peekoyle 9:22PM (3/08/2008)
^ Oh God, here we go again.
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ug 4:16AM (3/09/2008)
Yep. In the minds of the F.U.D. people, all electricity around the globe is produced by fossil fuels, always has been and always will be.
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rgseidl 5:32AM (3/09/2008)
@ug -
"always will be" - perhaps not. But right now, 75% of all electricity in the UK is in fact still generated from coal and natural gas. 20% come from nuclear (also dirty) and just 5% from renewables. Carbon neutrality is an ambition, not a fact.
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/supp/spkf21.htm
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Arnold Schneider 6:54AM (3/09/2008)
@Gary: How about charging your batteries with green energy? It's not carbon neutral, but compared with electricity from coal/oil/gas it's close to carbon neutral. Some Green Energy-Supplier offer electricity cheaper than the standard supplier. So switching is an easy decision.
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Dad 11:32AM (3/09/2008)
"A little more aerodynamic "
Does not matter when all it does it putter about in London where such low speeds aerodynamics make no difference at all.
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Mike Z 2:54PM (3/09/2008)
Because as we all know, a small ICE engine is just as good as a Combined Cycle Natural Gas Power Plant, right? Even if you powered it with a modern, more efficient, coal plant, it would still be better than a petroleum ICE.
Also, contrary to what skeptics, last I checked France was very clean and enjoyed cheap electricity and enjoyed it safely. viva la nuclear!
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David Wright 8:11PM (3/09/2008)
The naysayers can through as much mud as they like at EVs - but EVs are going to happen (and already are). The infernal combustion engine has served us well for a hundred years but is an anachronism in this 21st century. It is on the way out.
It'll take a while yet. But the tide is flowing inexorably in favour of EV transport.
Go with the flow ;o)
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bluegreen 2:26AM (3/10/2008)
MikeZ,
Sorry to burst your nuclear bubble but even in France, nuclear power is not without it's pitfalls. They may not have had any meltdowns and hopefully never will but where does all the nuclear waste go? This is a growing issue all over the world. Just look at Yucca Mountain in the US and realize how difficult it is to guarantee the integrity of nuclear waste storage 10,000 years into the future.
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Mike Z 9:10AM (3/10/2008)
I'm not saying that I like Nuclear as the best option, but after objectively looking at it--I've come to the conclusion that Wind, Solar, Geothermal, and Hydro are simply not enough without either living with significantly less energy or paying a great deal more for it.
What really won me over was the fact that I noticed that those opposed to nuclear power seemed to play very fast and loose with the facts when making their arguments, which indicated to me that they opposed nuclear more for ideological reasons then scientific ones.
The spent fuel issues seems a manageable issue, though personally I like the idea of developing medium term storage (say 200-300 years) and setting up a trust fund to pay for a future generation to deal with it when the technology comes about.
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joncaplan 10:35AM (8/29/2009)
@ Mike Z: I understand that some anti-nuclear folks are poorly informed as are people on many sides of many issues, but that is not a solid reason for changing your point of view.
I maintain my strong opposition to nuclear power because we have better alternatives to a technology where long-term storage of waste has not been satisfactorily solved and shifts risk to future generations. (The current generation of reactors also present unacceptable safety risks for daily operation, but the upcoming generation do much better in this regard.) As for the alternatives to nuclear, the first to consider is ways of using less power for the same benefit. If you look at the cost of a new nuclear plant, along with its fuel costs, its operational costs, its short-term waste storage (can be decades) and waste disposal costs (in the US promised to be borne by the federal government when there facility ready) it starts looking like a very expensive way to boil water. Now consider taking those same costs and investing them in energy efficiency. Take that US$ 1 billion cost for just the construction of a new nuclear plant and spend it on one million high-efficiency refrigerators, or apply it to the incremental cost of upgrading 10 million newly manufactured standard efficiency fridges to a high-efficiency equivalent and now you have saved more base load power than that nuclear plant would ever have been able to produce. Similar reasoning applies to lighting or cloths washing and drying (higher speed spin cycle cuts drying time and energy in half). The mechanism for shifting this investment from production of new generation capacity to investing in efficiency could range from government efficiency mandates, changing utility profit incentives to consumer tax breaks, depending on your political philosophy. In the end the choice between coal and nuclear is a false choice because it focuses only on the production side of the equation.
Now you may argue that eventually we need some way to produce power, which is fair enough. But now that our homes and perhaps businesses are fitted with more efficient devices, higher-cost alternative energy will have substantially less impact on the consumer because much less energy is needed. My energy cost of $19/month is due to the fact that my landlord installed a new fridge and I invested in efficient lighting. Even selecting my local utility's most expensive "100% wind for the future" option, without attempts to conserve energy doesn't make my bill exceed $20. Base load management to smooth out fluctuations from some renewable sources can be provided by a variety of technologies, including hydro, hydro pump storage, gas turbines, grid demand aware appliances, and others. Once we do all this then we can have some interesting arguments about coal vs. next generation nuclear.
Domenick Yoney 12:32PM (3/10/2008)
@bluegreen: Where does all the nuclear waste go?
Some of the waste from France goes to South Carolina.
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Domenick Yoney 12:32PM (3/10/2008)
@MikeZ: I find that many in favour of nuclear energy play fast and loose with the facts. There are all kinds of incidents we don't usually hear about.
Try googling, nuclear waste contamination. Now add words like groundwater. Surprise!
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Mike Z 2:10PM (3/10/2008)
Okay, show me the bodies then.
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sola 4:13PM (3/10/2008)
The nuclear waste problem could be reduced to its one tenth with complementing the current fleet of reactors with fast breeder reactors.
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CP 1:24AM (3/12/2008)
Hummm, what's better?...
-Rape our mountainsides and pollute our groundwater for coal.
-Drill and leak oil into our oceans.
-Transport oil and spill it into our Bays.
-Kill millions of people from toxic emissions from coal / natural gas power plants.
-Store nuclear waste in your backyard for 10,000 yrs.
...............or................
Cover half of all warehouses with solar panels in the US and eliminate all of the above (read Hermann Sheer)
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