Our first impressions after driving FedEx’s new electric delivery van

The BrightDrop Zevo 600 is spartan. It has a full suite of the latest driver safety aids, but you can see bare metal skin when you look at the door from the driver's seat, and the innate quiet of its electric powertrain is offset by the ever-present clanking. Being reliable, efficient, and safe is more important than being the last word in refinement because the Zevo 600 is a commercial van.

We have been following BrightDrop's development for a while now. The startup broke cover at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2021. BrightDrop raced the new Hummer EV to be the fastest-developed vehicle in GM history, using the new platform of batteries and electric motors.

There is a double-stacked slab of cells between the Zevo 600 and the Hummer EV. In this case, there are 20 modules, which is enough for a range of at least under 250 miles. The van traveled from New York City to Washington, DC on a single charge.

FedEx is BrightDrop's first customer, and the EV is designed to drop relatively painlessly into its fleet operations in California. It was decided that the throttle map would be almost exactly the same as the diesel in one of FedEx's conventional trucks. It is not meant to be fast.

The Zevo 600 has access to the same components and subsystems as the other new cars from GM. It has a suite of advanced driver assistance systems. It has the electronic architecture to support Super Cruise, should anyone ever come up with a business case to make that worthwhile.

Despite its bare doors, the Zevo 600 is configured as a FedEx work vehicle. There are a couple of 120 V AC sockets, as well as a couple of USB-A and USB-C ports, which means that the voice assistant is on-board and waiting to help. The cargo area of the van is especially wide.

Despite its size, the Zevo 600 was easy to place on the road. The compound side mirrors work well, and downtown DC looked cinematic as it was framed by the wraparound windshield. The steering was light and the turning circle was tight, and it was judged perfectly by the drive selector in the lower range setting.

The trip meter showed a respectable 1.8 miles per kWh over 548 miles (560 km), and at least 260 of those miles were at highway speed rather than the low-. I drove a Ford e-Transit in January and it was a pretty loud vehicle, mostly because it was a big empty box on wheels and didn't have the sound deadening and interior trim that quiets passenger vehicles.

I asked BrightDrop about private sales of electric vans, but that will probably require waiting for the first Zevo 600s to start their second lives. BrightDrop has plenty of vans to build for customers like FedEx and Walmart.