Atlanta-based shipping giant UPS announced Atlanta is one of three cities along with Dallas and Los Angeles where it will deploy a fleet of 50 electric delivery trucks.

Ed Crowell, president of the Georgia Motor Trucking Association, said more Georgia shipping companies are testing out electric trucks.

However, he noted, the infrastructure is not available universally.

“One of the reasons that UPS can do this is they can bring it back to the same location pretty much every evening,” Crowell said. “It’s a different story, for instance, if a truck has to run across the country, then it has to know that it has to know that it can charge effectively anywhere it needs to stop.”

The new electric UPS trucks have a range of 100 miles before they need to be recharged.

Crowell says more Georgia shipping companies are testing out electric trucks, but like UPS, they’re mostly for shorter routes in urban areas.

The shipping company UPS is partnering with an Ohio-based manufacturer to build the custom electric trucks this year. They rival the cost of its regular diesel trucks.

Scott Phillipi is an automotive maintenance and engineering manager with UPS.

“This is a really big breakthrough and a tipping point because up to this point, electric vehicles have been very expensive,” Phillipi said. “They wouldn’t even have come close in price.”

An electric truck used to cost more than $100,000. More efficient batteries and lightweight materials have cut that cost by about half, Phillipi said.

UPS said it eventually wants to replace 35,000 of its diesel trucks in urban areas.