How is your post delivered? Peugeot Partner or similarly anonymous van, a man with a bike, with an electric trolley or just walking the streets?
On a recent trip to Perugia in central Italy, we saw a solution which was perfectly practical, contemporary, and, well, very Italian. A FreeDUCk quadricycle – a battery powered lightweight fourwheeled vehicle built by Ducati in Bologna. Technically, it is built by Ducati Energia, the company from which the better Ducati motorbike concern emerged after the WW2, and is now a separate company. Like Rolls-Royce, Volvo, Skoda and Renault, the Ducati name is now used by various separate businesses. Ducati Energia is a business principally making power control equipment, industrial capacitors and associated measuring equipment.
The FreeDUCk (and that is how the name is spelt officially) is powered by eight 12 V batteries, housed under the floor and charged from a regular 220V supply. Charging takes no more than 8 hours, so this no Tesla. Range is around 60km, depending on use, from a full charge, and the maximum speed is 45km/h.
To give a feel for the size, it is 1.75m (a little under 6ft) long and exactly a metre wide. Dry weight is around 320kg (700lbs) and the maximum payload is 200kg (440lbs) , or in practical terms a well-fed postman and a box of parcels of the same weight. How quickly it would go up the hills of Perugia in that condition would be interesting to see.
The vehicle is built around a steel moncoque and fitted with ABS body panels, and flexible doors with a plastic sidescreen. In many respects, it is similar to a Renault Twizy, though smaller and slower.
To me, this looks like an ideal 21st Century post and delivery vehicle for a cramped European city centre, and Perugia is certainly that.
And remember, Italians get their post delivered by Ducati. That is ahead of any well used van, and just so Italian.
From the back it sort of looks like one of those recycling bins you see in some shopping centers. 🙂
There doesn’t seem to be much room for mail and parcels once the driver is in place too. But the flatbottomed Momo-looking steering wheel is a nice touch, and I suppose de regieur for an Italian postal vehicle.
My mail is delivered via the loathsome and ubiquitous (in the US) LLV. Except for last Saturday when it was delivered by a lady in a gold Honda Accord for some reason…
“My mail is delivered via the loathsome and ubiquitous (in the US) LLV.”
C’mon, Jim – your mail is delivered by a genuine 30+ year old Curbside Classic and you complain? 🙂
They are having way loo Long a Life to ever be a genuine CC. They don’t die. Maybe in another thirty years…
Like the Powerglide, the Iron Duke is both a GM Greatest Hit *and* a GM Deadly Sin.
Oh, I can just see dropping that on the Ducati crowd at Bikes in the Bottom this Sunday. They’d freak.
Does the postman wear matching leathers?
Check out this mini-car. They rent them in Shangri-La, China. BTW, it is a real place although it was actually renamed from something else to attract tourists. from China.
We tried something similar in the States in the late 50s through the mid 60s. This might work on dense inner city routes, but today’s U.S. Postal Service makes a lot of its money from package delivery and probably needs more cargo capacity. The old LLV might even be a little small for the modern suburban route.
They are in fact looking to replace the LLV with a more full-size van (one of the candidates is a modified Ford Transit) because of the demands, and profit center, of parcel delivery.
Interesting. Indeed, a Renault Twizy came to mind.
Typically our mail is delivered by (wo)man-powered machinery.
Ours was delivered by human powered machines but lately Ive noticed battery electric carts have taken over.
In Portugal, the mail is mostly delivered by 125cc motorcycles that get over 100 (US) mpg. The local mailman rides a Honda
Mine usually gets delivered by an LLV, but yesterday day it came in an elderly (3rd gen) Dodge minivan.
I don’t think any USPS mail carriers use anything older than the still-in-production Grand Caravan.
Unless it was a contracted route, probably rural. More than a few of those contract rural carriers are even still using the ancient, right-hand-drive, sliding door postal jeep.
Around here they seem to use these contractor types in random (personal) vehicles on an ad hoc basis. . No uniforms, no badges, no signage, just a random person in a random car with a key to the mailbox pod. It’s a bit weird, really.
Mine is delivered by an LLV.
Here, where every job/person/thing gets a nickname usually by suffixing “ie” or “y”, the mail is universally delivered by the postie on a postie bike, the Honda Ct110.
Great thing to post, Roger, thankyou.
Gawd, it’s so much cuter looking than the CBF125 used in my neck of the woods!
Even with Ducatis, the Italian postal service is reportedly so unreliable that Romans use the Vatican post office whenever possible.
Small motorbikes (previously the Honda 70 and its equivalents from the other Japanese manufacturers) are the vehicle of choice for our postal workers – the bikes now mostly come from China and are 125cc in displacement. This little vehicle does remind me of the Renault Twizy.
So basically a slightly upsized mobility scooter? Cool idea!