FedEx Adds More Than 4,000 New, Fuel Efficient Vehicles

Within the next two months, FedEx Express, a subsidiary of FedEx Corp., will place twenty-four new all-electric vehicles into service, expanding to three new cities, and more than doubling its fleet to forty-three all-electric vehicles while growing the diversity of suppliers it uses for electric vehicles.

At the same time, the company will be adding more hybrid-electrics, using composite vehicles and upgrading over a tenth of its conventional vehicle fleet to more energy-efficient vehicles.

The company is bringing new all-electric delivery vehicles to New York City, Chicago, and Memphis, and diversifying the existing Los Angeles fleet. In all, FedEx will add into service fifteen Navistar eStar electric vehicles, two Freightliner Custom Chassis Corporation (FCCC) eCell electric vehicles, and two FCCC electric vehicle retrofits, and five Ford Transit Connect Electric vans to complement the current nineteen all-electric vehicles deployed in Los Angeles, London, and Paris.

The vehicles will be studied in order to help gauge all-electric vehicle technology, with the goal of establishing understanding on utility grid needs by modeling impact of future all-electric vehicle growth on the shared energy grid.

In New York, FedEx Express will be working with GE and Columbia University's Engineering School to study energy grid impacts in an effort to project how large vehicle deployments would impact the energy grid.
In Chicago, FedEx Express will be comparing different all-electric vehicle technologies to determine what works best for its fleet needs.
In Memphis, FedEx Express is utilizing Enova Systems flexible drive technology to retrofit existing vehicles to make them all-electrics, saving resources through using existing vehicle bodies. And, FedEx has added five Transit Connect Electric vans from Ford Motor Company and Azure Dynamics to support the corporate Information Technology Asset Disposal program, driving regularly scheduled routes to pick up, recycle, reuse, and dispose of IT assets.
In Los Angeles FedEx Express is diversifying its fleet, adding an FCCC eCell to its current four Navistar eStar all-electric vehicles, and is in the midst of adding forty-five new FCCC-Eaton hybrid-electric pickup and delivery vehicles to its fleet.

FedEx Express has also been piloting five composite vehicles from Utilimaster in Detroit, Memphis, Jackson, TN, and Jonesboro, AR. Dubbed "The Reach," it is able to achieve thirty-five percent better fuel economy than its predecessor and has been performing well. The smaller, more efficient engine and low weight of the composite materials, which includes recycled rubber material, resin, fiberglass, and poly core, compared to aluminum, allows the vehicle to achieve these fuel efficiencies.

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