Last October, Frank Appel, head of the German post office, described the street scooter as a success. Now the German Post wants to stop production – this year. Last Friday, February 28, 2020, the Bonn-based company issued an Press release about the Streetscooter-Aus in circulation . The “current global economic uncertainties” are the cause of the U-turn in the case of the e-truck and the planned production stop.
Orders are still being processed, production stopped
Deutsche Post is planning to phase out production at its Aachen and Düren locations this year. According to the press release, new orders would no longer be accepted and only the delivery of already fixed orders would be processed. You want ” will now concentrate on the operation of the current street scooter fleet “, announced the logistician. The current vehicle fleet of around 11,000 e-delivery vans is expected to grow to 15,000.
Review: In 2014, Deutsche Post acquired the production company located in the triangle of three countries. It had emerged four years earlier from a privately organized research initiative at RWTH Aachen University. When the Post joined the company, a street scooter factory was built in Düren, the production capacity of which has not been fully utilized in the past six years. In 2018, the postal subsidiary posted a loss of 70 million euros, in 2019 it was already 100 million.
UPS decided against Streetscooter
In addition to these figures, it became known two weeks ago that competitor UPS was looking for an e-mobility solution against the street scooter and had decided to cooperate with the British start-up Arrival . On February 7th, Streetscooter managing director Jörg Sommer had announces its departure . After the end of the German e-delivery van became known, Streetscooter co-founder Günther Schuh spoke up and practiced in an Guest comment in the” Handelsblatt “ Criticism of the Post.
Schuh criticizes the post office and business location
“External sales were stopped for three years, internationalization as well, the planned re-engineering program as well, normal procurements were postponed, management was kicked out, amateurs were deployed, orders from the company’s own postal fleet were minimized, any improvement was prohibited – and waited for an opportunity to cease business under a pretext. ”, explained Günther Schuh, who, in addition to his professorship in the imperial city, is CEO of Electric car manufacturer Ego Mobile and described the end of the electric delivery van as a “poor certificate for Germany”. Concrete plans as to how things will continue for the roughly 500 Streetscooter employees at the Aachen and Düren locations are not yet known.
Image source: Deutsche Post DHL Group