The BrightDrop Zevo is a battery electric delivery van produced by

General Motors The General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is the largest automaker in the United States and ...

for its electric

commercial vehicle A commercial vehicle is any type of motor vehicle used for transporting goods or paying passengers. The United States defines a "commercial motor vehicle" as any self-propelled or towed vehicle used on a public highway in interstate commerce to ...

marque

BrightDrop BrightDrop is a subsidiary business created by the American manufacturer General Motors in 2021. The business offers a system of connected products targeting first- and last-mile delivery customers, including light commercial electric vehicles, ...

. It was unveiled at the

Consumer Electronics Show CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typi ...

on 12 January 2021. There are two models, the larger Zevo 600 (formerly EV600) and the smaller Zevo 400 (formerly EV410)

History

Rumors began circulating in June 2020 that GM was working on an all-electric delivery van, codenamed "BV1". According to earlier reports from December 2019, an all-electric van would be built at

Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly, also called Factory Zero, is a General Motors automobile assembly plant straddling the border between Detroit and Hamtramck, Michigan. It is located about three miles (five km) from GM's corporate headquarters. Wh ...

. At the time, the two contracts for 100,000

Rivian EDV The Rivian EDV (electric delivery van) is a battery-electric cargo vehicle built by Rivian exclusively for its investor Amazon, which will use the EDV for package delivery. The EDV uses the RCV (Rivian Commercial Vehicle) platform, which is deriv ...

electric delivery vans ordered by Amazon and 10,000

Arrival Van The Arrival Van is a battery electric cargo van produced by Arrival. It will be marketed from 2022. History The pre-production prototype of a fully electric van, which was also the first vehicle developed by the British company Arrival, was pre ...

s ordered by UPS were collectively valued at US$4 billion. The BrightDrop EV600 was unveiled as the marque's first vehicle at the

Las Vegas Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. N ...

on 12 January 2021 along with the EP1 electric

pallet A pallet (also called a skid) is a flat transport structure, which supports goods in a stable fashion while being lifted by a forklift, a pallet jack, a front loader, a jacking device, or an erect crane. A pallet is the structural foundat ...

cart; GM announced that FedEx had ordered 500 EV600s. The smaller EV410 was first shown that September; telecommunications company

Verizon Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in ...

was the first customer for the smaller van, with deliveries scheduled for 2023. In April 2022, BrightDrop announced it had renamed its products; the EV600 and EV410 became the Zevo 600 and Zevo 400, respectively. In addition, the EP1 was renamed to the Trace (e-cart spelled backward). GM partnered with

KUKA KUKA is a German manufacturer of industrial robots and systems for factory automation. It has been predominantly owned by the Chinese company Midea Group since 2016. The KUKA Robotics Corporation has 25 subsidiaries, mostly sales and servic ...

, a close supplier, to build the first batch of vehicles in Michigan so they could meet their 2021 delivery target. GM was scheduled to shift Zevo production to the

CAMI Automotive CAMI Assembly (formerly CAMI Automotive) is an assembly plant wholly owned by General Motors Canada. The plant occupies and has of floor space of which was added in 2016 as part of a $560 million investment. CAMI uses the CAMI Production System ...

factory at

Ingersoll, Ontario Ingersoll is a town in Oxford County on the Thames River in southwestern Ontario, Canada. The nearest cities are Woodstock to the east and London to the west. Ingersoll is situated north of and along Highway 401. Oxford County Road 119 (former ...

in November 2022. Some of the robots and tools made and used by KUKA to assemble the initial batch will be transferred to CAMI; CAMI staff have been using the initial batch to refine the production processes. Zevo 600 production at CAMI began on December 5, 2022. At maximum capacity, CAMI will be able to build 50,000 Zevo vans per year. Production of the smaller Zevo 400 is scheduled to start in late 2023. In addition to FedEx and Verizon, the

fleet management Fleet management is the management of: * Commercial motor vehicles such as cars, vans, trucks, specialist vehicles (such as mobile construction machinery), forklifts, and trailers * Private vehicles used for work purposes (the 'grey fleet') * Avi ...

company Merchants Fleet placed the largest single order of 18,000 EV600 and EV410 vans by November 2021.

FedEx FedEx Corporation, formerly Federal Express Corporation and later FDX Corporation, is an American multinational conglomerate holding company focused on transportation, e-commerce and business services based in Memphis, Tennessee. The name "Fe ...

received the first 5 EV600 vans from a 500-vehicle fleet order in December 2021, which they will operate out of their

Inglewood, California Inglewood is a city in southwestern Los Angeles County, California, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 107,762. It was incorporated on February 14, 1908. The city is in the South Bay ...

facility; the delivery company increased its order by 2,000 additional units and

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

reserved 5,000 units in January 2022. Consumer sales are scheduled to commence in 2022. In September 2022,

Hertz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that on ...

announced it would order up to 175,000 electric vehicles from GM, including an unspecified number of BrightDrop Zevo 600 vans. BrightDrop announced its first order from outside the US in December 2022; it will deliver vans to DHL Express Canada. It is anticipated the replacements for the

Chevrolet Express Chevrolet ( ), colloquially referred to as Chevy and formally the Chevrolet Motor Division of General Motors Company, is an American automobile division of the American manufacturer General Motors (GM). Louis Chevrolet (1878–1941) and oust ...

GMC Savana Savana is a town and commune in Madagascar. It belongs to the district of Vohipeno, which is a part of Vatovavy-Fitovinany Region. The population of the commune was estimated to be approximately 4,000 in the 2001 commune census. Only primary sch ...

, scheduled for the 2026 model year, will also use Ultium battery technology and may use a smaller version of the Zevo platform.

Design

The Zevo range is based on the

Ultium Ultium is an electric vehicle battery and motor architecture developed by General Motors. It is planned to be deployed for battery electric vehicles from General Motors portfolio brands along with vehicles from Honda and Acura. Ultium is ch ...

battery announced by GM in 2020. Because the van does not need a drive train axle, engineers were able to lower the step-in height by , improving ergonomics and reducing the physical strain on delivery drivers. The body is made of composite materials incorporating recycled content, riding on a typical battery-electric vehicle skateboard chassis with the underfloor traction motors and battery lowering the vehicle's

center of gravity In physics, the center of mass of a distribution of mass in space (sometimes referred to as the balance point) is the unique point where the weight function, weighted relative position (vector), position of the distributed mass sums to zero. Thi ...

. The chassis uses high-strength steel in the rocker panels, door reinforcement beams, floor structure, and side pillars extending forward from the front firewall.

Powertrain

The Zevo 600 has an estimated driving range of , which allows the vans to charge overnight for a full day of deliveries. Typical delivery routes average between per day, and the initial range was designed to ensure that delivery drivers could complete an entire route with confidence regardless of weather or traffic conditions. In addition, more gentle or partial charging cycles can be applied, which would prolong the life of the traction battery. The high voltage traction battery in the Zevo 600 uses 20 Ultium modules; for comparison, the

GMC Hummer EV The GMC Hummer EV (also known as Hummer EV and badged as HEV) is a line of battery electric full-size vehicles produced by General Motors under the GMC marque, and its own sub-brand. The Hummer EV line was introduced in October 2020 with t ...

uses 24 Ultium modules and has an usable capacity of 212.7 kW-hr, so the Zevo 600 has an estimated capacity of 170–178 kW-hr. The Zevo 600 is capable of recharging at rates of up to 120 kW (DC) or 11.5 kW (AC). The first vans were equipped with an

all-wheel drive An all-wheel drive vehicle (AWD vehicle) is one with a powertrain capable of providing power to all its wheels, whether full-time or on-demand. The most common forms of all-wheel drive are: ;1x1 : All unicycles Reflecting one axle with one w ...

system using two traction motors, one each for the front and rear axles, and the combined output was and . A

front-wheel drive Front-wheel drive (FWD) is a form of engine and transmission layout used in motor vehicles, where the engine drives the front wheels only. Most modern front-wheel drive vehicles feature a transverse engine, rather than the conventional longit ...

variant is expected in the future.

Cargo

The Zevo 600 has an advertised of cargo volume and a

GVWR Vehicle weight is a measurement of wheeled motor vehicles; either an actual measured weight of the vehicle under defined conditions or a gross weight rating for its weight carrying capacity. Curb or kerb weight Curb weight (U.S. English) or kerb ...

of under , providing an estimated payload rating of . The smaller Zevo 400 has of cargo volume, with a body approximately long, designed to fit in a standard parking space; the Zevo 400 rides on an approximately long wheelbase. The Zevo 600 has a sliding curbside door that is wide to facilitate moving bulky packages, and the dashboard on that same curb side has a depression that can accommodate two standard

United States Postal Service The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U ...

bins. The cargo area is separated from the driver's compartment with a sliding bulkhead door, and a translucent roof is available along with standard motion-activated LED lights to illuminate the rear, which will accommodate a standing person who is tall without stooping. When the exterior roll-up door is up, the rear opening measures wide and high.

Driver assistance

Advanced driver-assistance system An advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) is any of a groups of electronic technologies that assist drivers in driving and parking functions. Through a safe human-machine interface, ADAS increase car and road safety. ADAS uses automated technol ...

s include pedestrian detection, automatic emergency braking, and a rear-view camera. For the driver's convenience, the vehicle has parking assistance and may be locked, unlocked, or started remotely; fleets can monitor battery state of charge and track vehicle locations remotely as well. The steering wheel and seat are equipped with

haptic technology Haptic technology (also kinaesthetic communication or 3D touch) is technology that can create an experience of touch by applying forces, vibrations, or motions to the user. These technologies can be used to create virtual objects in a computer ...

to warn the driver of potential hazards through vibration. Current displays use

Android Automotive OS Android Automotive (aka Android Automotive OS or AAOS) is a variation of Google's Android operating system, tailored for its use in vehicle dashboards. Introduced in March 2017, the platform was developed by Google and Intel, together with car ma ...

, but the interface may be customized in the future. Electronic systems and accessories are operated from the low-voltage (12V) battery, which is carried at the driver's feet.

Guinness World Record

In April 2022,

driver Stephen Marlin set the

Guinness World Record ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...

for greatest distance traveled by an electric van on a single charge, driving a Zevo 600 from

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

, a distance of approximately .

Competitors

* Bollinger Deliver-E *

Canoo MPDV The Canoo Multi-Purpose Delivery Vehicle (MPDV for short) is a line of battery electric delivery vans produced by Canoo, the first of which was unveiled in December 2020. There are three planned models, the MPDV1 and the taller MPDV2, both shar ...

* Fiat E-Ducato * Ford E-Transit * Mercedes eSprinter *

Renault Master Z.E. The Renault Master is a large van produced by the French manufacturer Renault since 1980, now in its third generation. It replaced the earlier Renault Super Goélette light trucks. Opel has sold versions of the second and third series vans a ...

Workhorse C-Series The Workhorse C-Series was an American line of battery electric medium-duty delivery vans built by Workhorse Group for commercial package delivery company fleets, which entered limited production in 2021, were recalled that September, and were di ...

References

External links

* {{official website, 1=https://www.gobrightdrop.com/products/brightdrop-zevo Electric trucks Cars introduced in 2021 Electric vans