The National Clean Fleets Partnership, announced by President Obama in April, is a public-private partnership that helps large companies reduce diesel and gasoline use in their fleets by incorporating electric vehicles, alternative fuels, and fuel-saving measures into their daily operations.

These new partners have already begun taking action to develop and implement fuel-efficiency projects in their fleets, including:

• Coca-Cola, which has the largest hybrid delivery fleet in North America, has deployed hybrid delivery trucks and trained drivers in eco-driving techniques. The company also expects to deploy additional hydraulic hybrid vehicles this year.

• Enterprise Holdings—which includes Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Alamo Car Rent A Car, National Car Rental, and WeCar—currently offers Chevrolet Volts and Nissan Leafs to consumers for rentals and expects to further expand its fleet.

• General Electric has committed to convert half of their global vehicle fleet and will partner with fleet customers to deploy a total of 25,000 electric vehicles by 2015.

• Ryder recently celebrated the opening of its first natural gas vehicle maintenance facility, which will deploy hundreds of heavy-duty liquefied natural gas (LNG) trucks, include two LNG fueling stations and two additional maintenance facilities. This project is expected to save 1.5 million gallons of diesel fuel per year.

• Staples has increased the fuel economy of its fleet by more than 20% since 2007 through fuel-saving steps such as automatically limiting truck idling to no more than 3 minutes and limiting the top speed of its vehicles to 60 miles an hour. The company is also in the process of testing all-electric delivery trucks in Ohio and California.

• OSRAM SYLVANIA aims to replace 10-12% of their fleet annually with more energy-efficient vehicles. This year, they will replace more than one-fifth of their utility trucks with more efficient ones that reduce the need for idling.

The National Clean Fleets Partnership is part of the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Vehicle Technology Program’ Clean Cities initiative.