> the US
needs zero-emission, road-based, logistics solutions.
I worked on a SAE HEV Challenge car back in the 1990's.
There is no such thing as a zero-emissions transportation solution.
Let's say you managed to make a solar-powered skateboard navigate existing sidewalks and deliver packages. (Which is not going to happen.) You would still need to build the solar cells and computer boards, which are NOT zero-emissions processes.
If an electric car is zero-emissions when running on battery power, my pickup is zero-emissions if I turn off the engine and coast down hill. Zero-emissions is nonsense.
We can reduce emissions by reducing, reusing, and recycling. The problem is that our EPA overlords hate reusing. If they wanted to reduce emissions, they would not pull old vehicles off the road. Instead they would find low-use situations where they could replace newer vehicles. Instead they destroyed the oldest, most useful trucks in Junker-Clunker.
This reminds me of a coworker / boss at a university I taught at about 10-15 years ago. She had a shiny new Lexus thing that got 15 MPG with a huge engine and an (I think) 8-speed automatic transmission when I had never seen such a thing before. (I know they are common now, but at the time that was odd.) She made fun of my old 1990's Chevy S10 pickup truck that got 25 MPG every time I drove 90 minutes each way to take 1,000 lbs of computer equipment to a recycling center. I only took in for recycling the stuff I could not reuse. Enviromentalism is all about looks. It has nothing to do with reducing emissions.
If anyone believed the claims of the enviromentalists, they would be calling for the executions of the scum who cheat on fake carbon credits. Instead they are buying ocean front properties while selling books about rising sea levels.