USA – The Shyft Group is accustomed to coming up with new names – it switched only four years ago from ‘Spartan Motors’ – but its newest brand, ‘Blue Arc EV Solutions’, launched in 2022, took nine years in the making, during which time the group tried several ways to break into the emerging EV market.

Speaking with T&BB at the Advanced Clean Transportation (ACT) Expo, Eric Fisher, Senior Vice President & General Manager of Blue Arc, said that the group tried first of all to partner with various body builder partners and promising startups before eventually deciding to chart its own course. Shyft immediately ruled out the option of “repowering” diesel vehicles, that is to say retrofitting them with electric powertrains. “It seemed a waste to be throwing out all those ICE components”, Fisher said. And so, the group took the decision to develop EVs from the ground up and immediately set out to find a partner which could provide the e-powertrain expertise. None of these alliances worked out: “either they couldn’t scale, or the costs were too high, or suppliers dropped out,” Fisher explained.

The vehicle which Shyft presented at the show – a Class 3 fleet vehicle powered by battery electric – was the eventual result of “many years of trial and error”. With the exception of the shocking blue exterior, the Blue Arc van looks fairly ordinary, which is precisely the point. “We wanted to avoid designing something that’s so weird that the driver hates it or doesn’t know how to use it,” said Fisher. He went on to add that it is “easy” to make a prototype but hard to make it into a viable product. Shyft’s focus therefore has been on vehicle uptime and serviceability rather than cutting-edge concepts; its aim is to achieve a “seamless integration” of its Blue Arc vehicle service with its existing network of dealers and workshops, which cater to the group’s long list of brands (including Utilimaster and DuraMag).

The Blue Arc van’s main selling point is its lightweight body, which is made of aluminium and composites. It is, in fact, slightly shorter (by 9 inches) than comparable diesel models offered, for example, by Utilimaster. However, the cargo payload is up to 5,000lbs, which Fisher claims is a very competitive figure for the EV market. The idea behind the design is, with a shorter and lighter vehicle, more (i.e., heavier) cargo can be carried.

The Blue Arc van is powered by an electric axle supplied by Dana and a battery system from a fellow Michigan-based company, Our Next Energy Inc (‘ONE’). Fisher explained however that Shyft’s supply agreement with ONE is by no means exclusive. Following the bankruptcy of Proterra last year, Shyft had to quickly “pivot” away from its original battery agreement in order to get the production going. The vehicle shown at ACT Expo boasted a range of 225 miles while “city driving”.

Fisher described Blue Arc as a “startup within a company”; unlike several other startups, Blue Arc has managed to get past the prototype stage to full scale production. A repurposed facility at Shyft’s campus in Charlotte, Michigan is being used to assemble the whole vehicle; on a single-shift pattern, up to 1,500 vehicles can be produced in a year. Customer deliveries are slated for the end of the year, with dealer Randy Marion taking 2,000 units and Fedex 150.