Brown Goes Green

UPS to Use ZAP Electric Car and Truck Fleet for Deliveries
PETALUMA, CA -- (November 13, 2007) -- It will be a green holiday this season for United Parcel Service (UPS), who rolled out a small parcel delivery service this week in Northern California using 42 electric cars and trucks from ZAP (OTCBB: ZAAP).
UPS rolled out an electric car and truck fleet from ZAP this week to help with small parcel deliveries in dense urban communities. The move was made to reduce fuel consumption and reduce CO2 emissions.
The UPS branch in Petaluma, California has leased an initial fleet of 42 ZAP Xebra® electric city cars and trucks for their small parcel deliveries. This is the first time that UPS has used electric city-speed vehicles for this purpose.
Small parcel deliveries are becoming more challenging for the trademark big, brown UPS delivery vans, which is why UPS is using the electric city cars and trucks to handle small parcel deliveries. The ZAP vehicles lessen fuel consumption and reduce automotive emissions produced by current delivery vehicles. Drivers will be monitoring their electrical usage to carefully analyze cost-savings and emissions reductions.
Read full story here.

Haslem test drives the SmartCar

BY NICHOLAS SPANGLER
The Smart Fortwo is just eight feet 10 inches long but is pretty roomy, as sub-subcompact cars go. How, you ask, will it fare in the crucial professional basketball-playing segment of the American market?
Focus-group testing was performed the other day, after practice, on Miami Heat forward Udonis Haslem. Haslem, who is six-foot-eight and weighs 235 pounds, usually drives a Cadillac Escalade or a Mercedes-Benz S-Class, both about 17 feet long, with specially extended seats.
This would seem to be no problem at all, since some weeks ago the Smart Car president told The New Yorker a six-foot-eight guy had fit ''beautifully'' -- as did ''a guy who weighed more than 500 pounds,'' but probably not at the same time.
Read more and see the video here.