Current Trends Minneapolis MN

Sure, there was a time not so long ago when electric vehicles were only seen carting snowbirds around their retirement communities in Coral Gables, or toting foursomes around the links, but that was before we knew about greenhouse gases and $100 a barrel oil.

Two recent headlines illustrate the sudden resurgence of the electric vehicle as a potential solution to our fuel woes. First came this:

Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago Greens Its Fleet With Purchase of 30 All-Electric, Zero-Emissions Cars

- Acquisition of ZX40 Models Represents MILES' Largest Sale of All-Electric Vehicles to a Government Agency -

Then came this:

10,000 Electric Trucks Per Year to be Built in USA

You read that right. First, an American electric vehicle manufacturer makes its biggest sale ever to a government agency, then a British manufacturer of Class-6, -7 and -8 electric delivery trucks announces plans to construct a manufacturing facility to build 10,000 trucks a year for the US market.

What's going on here? Apparently, the time has come for electric vehicles to take their place in American fleets.

Charged Up

When the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD) needed vehicles for maintenance engineers to get around its 570-acre wastewater treatment plant—one of the largest in the world—they chose to purchase 30 ZX40 electric cars from Miles Electric Vehicles.

According to Stephen Carmody, engineer of treatment plant operations for MWRD, the ZX40s replaced a fleet of relative gas-hogs: Geo Metros.

"We have a staff of tradespeople, engineers and operating personnel who use the vehicles," he says. "In my section alone, we have a full staff of 168 trades, and they use the cars as personnel carriers with small hand tools.

"We only allow two people in the cars," he explains. "When you start getting into more people and larger tools, we have truck drivers who take them around, and that's a union issue."

Clean and Green

Carmody says the District's decision to purchase so many electric vehicles stemmed from a company-wide drive to "go green," spurred by the District's new superintendent and its commissioners.

"This isn't the only initiative we have," he says. "We're doing natural prairie landscaping, we burn digester (waste methane) gas in our boilers to produce steam for the plant, we've changed to high-efficiency lighting—we have been doing energy conservation for quite a few years. The environment is our line of work, so we're just trying to branch out and do as much as we can."

According to MWRD spokesperson Jill Horist, "The District's mission is to protect our water environment. Primary to that objective, our operation has a pervasive consciousness of the interdependent relationship of all natural resources and our effect on them.

"It is only fitting that the District would be the first in the nation to proactively utilize cost-effective, eco-friendly transportation," she says.

Buzzing Around

Adapting to electric vehicles is pretty easy, Carmody reports, although, "Plugging in a car is definitely new."

The District has a central garage where the 30 vehicles are kept. Charging cords on retractable reels were installed to create charging stations, and the staff simply plug in at the end of their shift and leave the cars to charge overnight.

"I've gotten some comments from drivers that the cars are a bit 'tinny,'" Carmody reports. "In order to give them some range and not wear down the batteries too quickly, they really had to cut down on weight. So, they're really light.

"Is that an issue? Not really," he says. "We're not taking them out on the road. They're just taking you from point A to point B in the plant.

"There are some power issues," he continues. "It can be a little rough going up a steep hill. There are some limitations with the torque output on the engines, but Miles says they're changing motors to try to improve the power output."

Growing Awareness

Jeff Boyd, CEO of Santa Monica, CA-based Miles Electric Vehicles, says that the MWRD order was significant for his company and for the fleet world as well.

"There's a growing awareness among municipalities and educational institutions of the need to 'green' their fleets," he says. "Many of these institutions—universities, wastewater treatment plants, airports and so on—are closed campuses, and don't need to spend $20,000 to $30,000 for traditional internal combustion vehicles to drive around these campuses. It's not efficient, it's extremely costly, and they're concerned about CO2 emissions.

"So, they've been investigating alternative fuel vehicles, including hybrids, and flex-fuel vehicles, all of which we applaud," he says. "Our founder and chairman, Miles Rubin, decided to go all electric. His view is that all-electric vehicles offer the best solution long-term to increase our energy security, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and eliminate CO2 emissions."

Boyd says that Miles offers a line-up of low-speed, all-electric cars and trucks that are limited to 25 miles an hour on streets where the speed limits are 35 miles per hour or under.

"Many of our clients, including UCLA, Stanford, NASA, the U.S. Navy and MWRD, have found these vehicles to be safe, reliable, and incredibly efficient in terms of overall operating cost," Boyd says.

Driving Range

Vehicles produced by Miles run on AC motors and controllers, on 72V battery systems made up of advanced glass mat maintenance-free lead acid batteries. The driving range is from about 40 miles to 60 miles, depending on the type of use. Recharge time from a complete discharge is four to six hours.

"The vehicles have a very sound track record," Boyd explains. "They are DOT certified. Obviously, NHTSA has very strict requirements for safety, and we meet or exceed NHTSA safety requirements for this type of low-speed vehicle."

Boyd says that the current state of battery development is "very dynamic."

"There's a tremendous amount of research going on around the world in battery technology," he says. "Our low-speed vehicles use state-of-the-art lead acid batteries, but the world is moving to lithium-ion. We have a partner in China that is helping us develop a lithium-ion battery pack for our high-speed car."

Boyd is referring to what he believes will be the world's first high-speed all-electric highway sedan, the SX500.

"That's the holy grail for consumers," Boyd says, but fleets might also find the SX500 the answer to their dreams as well.

For now, however, Boyd feels that Miles' low-speed models will carry the load for most fleet applications. That doesn't mean that fleets will have to settle: even the low-speed vehicles will benefit from lithium-ion technology when it's ready. "We're very excited about the progress we're making," Boyd says.

The Battery Challenge

Brian Wynne, president of the Washington, DC-based Electric Drive Transportation Association (EDTA), says that battery technology doesn't have to be a hindrance to electric vehicle acceptance.

"Batteries have been the challenge around full-function electric vehicles," Wynne says, "but there are a whole host of off-road vehicles and low-speed vehicles that are quite functional with lead acid batteries, and they play a role that can be very useful to fleet managers today, depending on their requirements."

"Fleet customers have been traditionally a lot more cost-conscious, and are looking at lifetime costs of ownership of a vehicle," says Catherine Scrimgeour, public affairs specialist for Toronto, ON-based ZENN Motor Company.

"Electric vehicles are extremely cost-effective over time in regards to operating costs, and there's virtually no maintenance on them," Scrimgeour says, pointing out that her company's car, the ZENN, has 80 percent fewer parts than an internal combustion vehicle.

Full-function electric vehicles, however, like that other Holy Grail, the plug-in hybrid, will need lithium-ion batteries to reach on-highway performance and range standards.

"The challenges are well-known," EDTA's Wynne says. "Safety is foremost, and I think we've made tremendous advancements with some of the new chemistries that are coming out. Reliability is a question—how long can they last, how many cycles, how deep can you cycle them, etc. That varies a lot from company to company and from technology to technology."

Batteries always carry a trade-off: you can have more power, you can have more energy, but you can't have both.

"Some technologies are better at recapturing power—for example, regenerative braking power—because they can charge up a lot faster," Wynne explains. "Others take longer to charge up, but they tend to be more energy-intensive."

There's one more challenge, perhaps the worst: the price point.

"These are new technologies, the manufacturing base isn't there yet, we're just ramping up, and therefore they're expensive," Wynne says.

New Attitudes

Historically, consumers and fleets alike have often dismissed electric vehicles because of their lack of range and lack of utility (think of those lead acid battery packs taking up all the storage space). But are those attitudes changing along with battery technology, or is there some catching up to do?

In Scrimgeour's eyes, consumers are becoming more open-minded about "thinking outside the box" to meet their personal transportation needs, buying electric vehicles for in-town use while keeping an internal combustion vehicle for longer trips, creating a sort of a "virtual hybrid" out of two separate vehicles.

Although she sees fleet operators taking a "wait-and-see" attitude towards electric vehicles, Scrimgeour notes that over 700 municipalities in the U.S. have signed onto the "Kyoto Mayor's Protocol," taking the pledge to reduce their greenhouse gases even if the Federal government won't. "Alternative power vehicles are playing a big part in that," she says.

"Attitudes are changing, in that I see less focus on the vehicles, and more focus on the technology itself," says Wynne. "The reason I say that is, electric drive can be implemented a number of ways, and at the end of the day it's really about the drive cycle and the application.

"That's going to be driven, a lot, by fleet operators," he says. "I'm looking out my window at two postal delivery trucks. One is about a Class-5, and the other is a bigger van. Both of them could be really good candidates for some type of an electric drive implementation, but they might be different from each other.

"This is what fleet managers are beginning to understand: they can drive that process by coming to manufacturers and saying, 'This is the kind of truck I need. I'm agnostic as far as the power source, but I want to leverage electricity as much as I can,'" Wynne says. "Utility fleets are very good at leveraging electric drive technologies in their vehicle applications—from bucket trucks to customer service applications—in a way that actually maximizes their business model and increases customer satisfaction. So, attitudes are beginning to change as fleet operators realize they can change their own destinies.

"If anybody's shaking their head, saying 'I don't get that,' all they have to do is look at how consumers are already adopting hybrid vehicles, and pretty soon, plug-in hybrids, in ever increasing numbers," he explains. "Automobile manufacturers are putting them out in a greater number of models, and right behind them are the medium- and heavy-duty manufacturers. They're looking for fleets that have particular challenges that they need solutions for."

Electric Lorry

One company that is listening to what fleets want is Smith Electric Vehicles, manufacturer of the all-electric, zero-emission Class-5, -6 and -7 Newton, weighing in with a Gross Vehicle Weight (GVW) of over 24,000lbs.

According to the UK-based company, the Newton is the world's largest electric truck, with a payload capacity of up to 15,800 lbs, but more important to fleets is the claim that the Newton can reach a top speed of 50 mph, and has a maximum range of up to 150 miles. The 278 volt batteries and 120 kilowatt motor give the Newton the ability to accelerate from zero to 30 mph faster than the equivalent diesel-powered truck, the company claims.

"Our primary market niche is the delivery market in dense urban centers like New York City or Los Angeles," says Mark Aubry, north american sales manager for Smith Electric Vehicles. "These are locations where there are 'congestion charges' coming in, and fleets need a product that not only fits their transportation needs, but also meets the (environmental) demands of the community."

Launched in early 2007 in Europe, the Smith Newton is already being used in the UK in fleets with household names such as Starbucks and DHL, along with British institutions like the Royal Mail and retailer Marks & Spencer.

Will this very English "lorry" work its way into the hearts of American fleet managers? Smith Electric Vehicles certainly thinks so, as the company's Fresno, CA facility has the capacity to produce 1,000 units a year, and a planned manufacturing facility will be able to produce 10,000 trucks a year.

"Ten thousand vehicles a year is a substantial commitment, but we believe that is just the start," says Darren Kell, CEO of The Tanfield Group Plc, the company that owns Smith Electric. "Our initial research shows that there is an addressable market in the USA of around 200,000 units a year for our commercial electric vehicles."

On the Grow

Still shaking your head and saying, "I don't get that?" Just give it time.

Electric vehicles are showing up all over, in the fleet and consumer markets alike, each market driving demand and supply in the other.

In time you may find a ZENN or a Miles or a Smith electric vehicle in your livery, and when you do, you may never go back to internal combustion.