simple + green

Holiday package deliveries are getting Green: United Parcel Service has leased 42 plug-in electric cars and trucks made by Zap of Santa Rosa to deliver smaller packages in Petaluma, Rohnert Park, Sebastopol, Sonoma, Novato, San Jose and Santa Cruz during this busy holiday season.

Noted in an article in today’s SF Chronicle, UPS will be offloading some of their smaller and shorter deliveries to the three-wheel Zap Xebras. This is the first time that UPS has used electric city-speed vehicles for this purpose.

UPS is using the Xebra in high-density residential areas where parking and traffic are a problem for the familiar big brown trucks.

Being local, I’ve heard of Zap before. What a great idea:

Zap stands for zero air pollution. With six dry-cell batteries powering its real-wheel-mounted motor, a Xebra can go up to 40 mph. It has a range of about 25 to 40 miles after being plugged into an ordinary electrical outlet overnight. Zap estimates driving costs at 3 cents per mile for electricity.

We’re not quite to full zero-emission for UPS, but we’ve seen this theme before: when a known company makes a positive change that helps to reduce environmental impact or promotes any number of green concepts:

Everyday people notice. The business community notices. This change invokes more positive change.

Historical footnote: the Xebra was featured in the 2006 film, “The Da Vinci Code.”