The company wants to compete with Ford and startups for orders for electric vans from Amazon and UPS
As Reuters learned from five people who were familiar with the situation, General Motors launched an electric van program: “General Motors is developing an electric van designed for business users and joining a growing list of car manufacturers planning electric cars for the same a segment that includes customers such as Amazon and United Parcel Service. ”
GM is preparing an electric van
Interestingly, Tesla also sees the ghost of car manufacturers in this segment: “Suppliers of [components] familiar with GM and Ford plans said that Detroit car manufacturers, who consider the truck and commercial vehicle segment to be one of the most profitable,“ do not want to leave the door open for Tesla “As they did with cars. ”
Here, of course, one can argue about the “open doors”, because just in the situation with cars, large companies simply overslept the mass production of electric cars, and therefore they are now forced to catch up with Tesla, but there is really not much competition in the field of commercial cars. Although not to say that it does not exist at all. In Europe, electric vans have already begun to be actively offered by different companies, in the USA there is a Nissan e-NV200, an electric Ford Transit will appear in 2022, and Mercedes is preparing an eSprinter. As for GM, its electric van should go into production at the end of next year. Then GM will be able to compete with other firms for orders of such large companies and institutions as Amazon, UPS, and the US Post Office.
Meanwhile, electric minivan is cooking and Tesla. True, it will be a passenger model with a capacity of up to 12 people for The Boring Company project, but subsequently, nothing will prevent Tesla from transforming the passenger model into a commercial one intended for the transportation of goods. So maybe in Detroit, it’s not for nothing that they are afraid of Tesla.
