[jcrawfordor]

I can't help but notice that the StreetScooter is significantly smaller than a typical UPS truck. It looks in the size range of a Ford Transit Connect, while most UPS trucks are Utilimaster curb vans that are something like 25' in length. I suspect that the balance of vehicle size and mileage might make this kind of adoption rather difficult for UPS - I live in a city, but not a very dense one, where I'm pretty confident that UPS trucks can regularly clock a couple of hundred miles per day.

Incidentally this city is also in the process of adopting a fleet of battery-electric transit buses, but it's been a very rough process for the same sorts of reasons - very large vehicles that run very long routes in this relatively far-flung city. The buses failure in testing to deliver the promised 270 mile range has been a major issue with them, as the roughly 200 they're able to do isn't sufficient to complete their planned schedule.

[fencepost]

In at least some parts of Germany they're more likely to encounter narrow streets where the typical US brown UPS truck might have real difficulty navigating.

I also suspect that the routes are shorter than you might think, because there are a lot of stops and they are not moving all that fast for most of the trip. I suspect most UPS trucks probably average well under 25 miles per hour for most of their travel which would put an 8 hour day around 200 miles. In denser areas like cities it could be significantly less than that. If a truck makes a 1-minute stop to toss a package on your porch then drives half a mile in another minute and repeats, it's still only covering 15 miles and 30 packages an hour.

I wouldn't be surprised if UPS trucks within cities tended to be below 50 miles/day most of the time, and since they control driving routes very tightly they can easily put these trucks only on appropriate routes.