After watching this video of an electric van delivering for Amazon in the US, the question has to be, will there be singing trucks? The vehicles function so quietly, they will have to make some sort of sound to warn others of their approach, so why not have them produce something musical?
This is one of the early Amazon vans from Rivian, which is one of the leaders in the production of electric vans. The sound is only emitted when the van is travelling at slow speeds, but is reported to be surprisingly loud.
Here is a video with a lot more aspects of electric vans explained. This is part of an ongoing series about electric vehicles, called Fully Charged.
The van featured here is Arrival, which was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in the UK, with over 1,200 global employees located in offices across the USA, Germany, Netherlands, Israel, Russia, and Luxembourg.
Last January, UPS announced an order of 10,000 purpose built electric vehicles from UK based Arrival. The initial 10,000 vehicles were planned to be rolled out in the UK, Europe and North America from 2020 to 2024 worth hundreds of millions of euros each year. UPS is said to have the option to purchase a further order of 10,000 vehicles during this period. UPS venture capital arm also announced an investment in Arrival of an undisclosed amount.
The vehicles are planned to be built using Arrival’s method of assembly using low capital, low footprint microfactories located to serve local communities and profitable from thousands of units.
Late last year, Arrival announced it has raised $118 million from funds managed by BlackRock. The fundraising will be used to support execution of the company’s growth plans as it ramps up vehicle production, including the launch of Arrival’s first U.S. Microfactory in South Carolina.
