On the heels of announcing it had purchased the first fully electric small delivery vehicles, Canada Post added the first all-electric step vans in Canada to its fleet. The Navistar eStar (earlier post), a Class 2c-3 electric truck and the first in its category, has a range of 160 kilometers (100 miles) per charge and can be fully recharged within 6 to 8 hours.
Each eStar truck can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 10 tons annually. The windshield design provides nearly 180-degree visibility, the low-floor design allows easy loading/unloading and the noise level is nearly non-existent.
Canada Post has the largest delivery fleet in Canada—more than 7,300 vehicles traveling more than 79 million kilometers (49 million miles) a year. The company has made investments in researching and testing alternative technologies including ethanol, biodiesel, natural gas, propane, hydrogen, hybrids as well as electric vehicles to reduce the environmental impact of its fleet.