GM’s BrightDrop is bringing its electric delivery vans to Mexico

GM’s BrightDrop is bringing its electric delivery vans to Mexico

Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge

BrightDrop, the electric delivery spinoff of General Motors, is bringing its battery-powered delivery vans to Mexico as its next market. The company now covers all of North America after expanding to Canada last year.

The first two products that will be available to customers in Mexico will be the company’s Zevo 400 and Zevo 600 delivery vans. The Zevo 600 sports a 165 kWh battery pack for 250 miles of range. The Zevo 400 is smaller and nimbler — though we’re still waiting for more specific specs when it starts production later this year. Customers in Mexico will be able to place orders for the vans through BrightDrop’s website also starting later this year.

BrightDrop EVs are built at GM’s CAMI Assembly plant in Ontario, Canada, where GM says that production of the Zevo 600 is ramping up with the Zevo 400 “on track to begin in the next few months.”

GM created BrightDrop in 2021 as part of a major effort to reboot the delivery space for the electrified era. Electric delivery vans aren’t BrightDrop’s only products. It aims to be an e-commerce delivery ecosystem that includes software, access to charging station providers, and even an electric propulsion-assisted pallet that can be used in the warehouse or on the street for delivery and package pickup.

BrightDrop has deals with several major delivery and utility companies, including Walmart, FedEx, and Verizon. The pandemic has fueled a boom in home delivery, with experts predicting that the number of delivery vehicles in the largest 100 cities around the world will increase by 36 percent over the next decade. More trucks equal more tailpipe pollution, at least 36 percent or 6 million tons, according to the World Economic Forum.

The stakes are huge for BrightDrop and for GM. Last year, the company confidently predicted that it would reach $1 billion in revenue by 2023, making it one of the fastest companies to ever achieve that milestone. But GM’s EV sales have slowed, quarter over quarter, as the company has run into supply chain challenges in terms of getting its Ultium battery vehicles built.

Earlier this year, BrightDrop CEO Travis Katz told Decoder that the company was going to make more money faster than Tesla. “To put that in context, it took Tesla 10 years to hit $1 billion,” Katz said. “I feel like this combination, this startup backed by a large company, is paying off pretty well for us.”