Germany’s DHL Pulls The Plug Off Electric Delivery Van Venture

Germany’s Deutsche Post is axing their StreetScooter electric delivery van produced in cooperation with Ford, ending a venture that was among the first to offer a battery electric commercial vehicle.

After years of losses stemming from the development and the production of the electric delivery van, the company’s Chief Financial Officer Melanie Kreis said that the venture racked up a loss of around 100 million euros (around $110 million).

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Bloomberg reported that Deutsche Post had first sought to sell the venture and later went after potential partners to aid in turning around StreetScooter and finance a potential expansion.

DHL even hired most recently a former Tesla director to expand their sales network, and planned to set up a production site in China via a joint venture with Chery. But after the decision to pull the plug, the company is instead faced with making potential payments to its partners for ending the whole project.

The StreetScooter was sold to retailers, fleet operators and banks apart from being used in the DHL fleet, as it was aided initially by cities cracking down on emissions and a booming online sales industry.

Deutsche Post said that production of the StreetScooter will end later this year, resulting in writedowns of between 300 million euros and 400 million euros ($335 million to 446 million) according to Kreis. DHL is currently using 11,000 StreetScooters in its fleet, with several thousand examples to be added later this year.