FRANKFURT: On German streets plied by hulking SUVs and roaring combustion engines, the small, toy-like electric vehicles driven by postmen stand out by their silence and their bright yellow livery.
But even more surprising to many in the car-loving nation is the Deutsche Post horn logo on the prows of the so-called “Streetscooters” — vans that are not much bigger than the iconic Volkswagen Golf.
To some analysts, the former state-owned logistics firm is showing up auto industry giants like Volkswagen, BMW or Daimler by shifting gears toward vehicle electrification even faster.
More than 6,000 Streetscooters number among the 49,300 vehicles Deutsche Post uses for local deliveries, and the company recently opened a second factory to up production to 40 per day.
When the traditional carmakers were slow to respond to its search for a low-carbon, low-cost van, bosses snapped up a small start-up firm to build its own.
Industry expert Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer of the Center for Automotive Research calls the move “a starting gun” for electric mobility in Germany, where headlines are more often dominated by a seemingly endless diesel emissions scandal.
For 20-year veteran of the Frankfurt post office Miroslav Arapovic, the new vehicle just means he is “less noisy and better integrated into the environment” as he makes his rounds.
“I’ve already had compliments from passers-by, like for the fact there aren’t any oil marks” on the street, he says.
Deutsche Post designed its Streetscooter from scratch as a delivery vehicle for inner cities.
Its battery offers a range of just 80 kilometers, massively slashing the costs of production.
Given such “very specific” requirements it was unsurprising that the major manufacturers focused on mass-market models were unable to rise to the challenge, explains Stefan Reindl, director of the Institute for the Automobile Economy (IFA).
Firms like Volkswagen have inflexible production chains, discouraging them from producing at small scale, and they “tend to overengineer” vehicles rather than pursuing minimalism.
For its part, Deutsche Post “does not want to become a carmaker,” seeking only to optimize the “last kilometer” of its deliveries, Streetscooter chief Achim Kampker says.
The “last mile,” a term adopted from the telecoms industry, is a top question for delivery firms, city authorities and environmentalists, especially in crowded, polluted German city centers.
It refers to the question of how to efficiently move goods from central hubs on to their final destination in densely populated urban areas.
Numbers of delivery vehicles making the rounds have ballooned, as booming e-commerce sets ever-more packages on their way to households’ front doors.
A British study found in 2017 that light van traffic in London had increased 30 percent over 1993 levels, unlike car and taxi traffic which has been sinking since the early 2000s.
Meanwhile, German cities are scrambling to clean up their air after a court decision ruled that diesel vehicles could be banned as a measure of last resort.
Hamburg and Stuttgart are among the first local authorities to shut off parts of their territory to older cars powered by the fuel.
Despite Kampker’s claims of limited ambitions, Streetscooter has gradually become a key player in this growing market, offering its product to outside customers for the past year at a cost of around €40,000 ($46,400) each.
In late May, it announced a sale of 200 vans to a British milk delivery firm, while a subsidiary of energy firm Innogy ordered 300 in early July.
Streetscooter is also working on a larger, more powerful model with US-based Ford, which will supply the new van’s chassis.
Such early wins are no guarantee of lasting success in an ultra-competitive industry, where traditional carmakers are increasingly switching their focus to electric mobility.
In 2017, Daimler announced a partnership with delivery firm Hermes to develop and produce some 1,500 vans by 2020.
One analyst asks whether Deutsche Post can “remain competitive over the long term” in a market where the likes of BMW and Volkswagen are beginning to throw their massive weight around.
Industry expert Reindl is “certain” that there will be a broad range of offers from the household names in the near future.
“Perhaps it’s the moment for them to adapt and to think about whether their products need to be so complex every time,” he suggests.
Deutsche Post CEO Frank Appel said in June that he aims to keep Streetscooter within the group “at least for the next two years,” although in the long term it may get a separate stock market listing or be bought out by a major carmaker.
Germany’s Deutsche Post delivers electric car surprise
Germany’s Deutsche Post delivers electric car surprise
- More than 6,000 Streetscooters number among the 49,300 vehicles Deutsche Post uses for local deliveries
- Numbers of delivery vehicles making the rounds have ballooned, as booming e-commerce sets ever-more packages on their way to households’ front doors
Filipinos master disaster readiness, one roll of the dice at a time
- In a library in the Philippines, a dice rattles on the surface of a board before coming to a stop, putting one of its players straight into the path of a powerful typhoon
MANILA: In a library in the Philippines, a dice rattles on the surface of a board before coming to a stop, putting one of its players straight into the path of a powerful typhoon.
The teenagers huddled around the table leap into action, shouting instructions and acting out the correct strategies for just one of the potential catastrophes laid out in the board game called Master of Disaster.
With fewer than half of Filipinos estimated to have undertaken disaster drills or to own a first-aid kit, the game aims to boost lagging preparedness in a country ranked the most disaster-prone on earth for four years running.
“(It) features disasters we’ve been experiencing in real life for the past few months and years,” 17-year-old Ansherina Agasen told AFP, noting that flooding routinely upends life in her hometown of Valenzuela, north of Manila.
Sitting in the arc of intense seismic activity called the “Pacific Ring of Fire,” the Philippines endures daily earthquakes and is hit by an average of 20 typhoons each year.
In November, back-to-back typhoons drove flooding that killed nearly 300 people in the archipelago nation, while a 6.9-magnitude quake in late September toppled buildings and killed 79 people around the city of Cebu.
“We realized that a lot of loss of lives and destruction of property could have been avoided if people knew about basic concepts related to disaster preparedness,” Francis Macatulad, one of the game’s developers, told AFP of its inception.
The Asia Society for Social Improvement and Sustainable Transformation (ASSIST), where Macatulad heads business development, first dreamt up the game in 2013, after Super Typhoon Haiyan ravaged the central Philippines and left thousands dead.
Launched six years later, Master of Disaster has been updated this year to address more events exacerbated by human-driven climate change, such as landslides, drought and heatwaves.
More than 10,000 editions of the game, aimed at players as young as nine years old, have been distributed across the archipelago nation.
“The youth are very essential in creating this disaster resiliency mindset,” Macatulad said.
‘Keeps on getting worse’
While the Philippines has introduced disaster readiness training into its K-12 curriculum, Master of Disaster is providing a jolt of innovation, Bianca Canlas of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) told AFP.
“It’s important that it’s tactile, something that can be touched and can be seen by the eyes of the youth so they can have engagement with each other,” she said of the game.
Players roll a dice to move their pawns across the board, with each landing spot corresponding to cards containing questions or instructions to act out disaster-specific responses.
When a player is unable to fulfil a task, another can “save” them and receive a “hero token” — tallied at the end to determine a winner.
At least 27,500 deaths and economic losses of $35 billion have been attributed to extreme weather events in the past two decades, according to the 2026 Climate Risk Index.
“It just keeps on getting worse,” Canlas said, noting the lives lost in recent months.
The government is now determining if it will throw its weight behind the distribution of the game, with the sessions in Valenzuela City serving as a pilot to assess whether players find it engaging and informative.
While conceding the evidence was so far anecdotal, ASSIST’s Macatulad said he believed the game was bringing a “significant” improvement in its players’ disaster preparedness knowledge.
“Disaster is not picky. It affects from north to south. So we would like to expand this further,” Macatulad said, adding that poor communities “most vulnerable to the effects of climate change” were the priority.
“Disasters can happen to anyone,” Agasen, the teen, told AFP as the game broke up.
“As a young person, I can share the knowledge I’ve gained... with my classmates at school, with people at home, and those I’ll meet in the future.”
