The city’s first two electric pickup trucks are set to hit city streets as early as Monday.
2 Ford Lightning pickup trucks have been added to the light vehicle fleet.
The trucks are fully electric and emission-free and will reduce carbon emissions by approximately 25 tonnes of CO2 Annually.
The trucks will be used by the Transit Division and will be used for a variety of things like road patrols, inspections, supporting transit operations, assisting with customer service, and more.
Before the trucks were added to the fleet, electric work, and chargers were installed at the transit garage on Fort William Road.
“We were able to secure funding from the federal and provincial governments for the purchase of these vehicles, so the city taxpayer didn’t shoulder sole responsibility,” explained Manager of Fleet Services, Doug Glena. “It will give us the opportunity to trial these vehicles, look at their performance and then move forward with more electric vehicles where it makes sense to do so.”
“We’ll monitor the performance and then when we do our budget presentations, we will report back to Council through our budget presentations on whether we’re looking to purchase more trucks and where we’d be looking to purchase. ”
The trucks all in, including the installation of the chargers, came out to $103,000 per truck.
The trucks will replace two gas-fueled half-ton trucks as part of the city’s fleet renewal. The replaced gas trucks used roughly 5,400 litres of fuel per year.
Generally, fleet pickup trucks would stay in service for about 10 years with the kilometers and the utilization they put on in the city, but it is expected that these new electric trucks should be able to stay on the road longer, at as much as 15 years.
