SF Bay Area local governments roll out 90 EVs into their fleets
09 July 2014
Alameda County Board of Supervisors President Keith Carson, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the Bay Area Climate Collaborative (BACC), and 10 other public agencies today announced the rollout of 90 all-electric vehicles into the fleets of ten Bay Area local governments—the largest government fleet EV deployment in the US to date.
The public agencies receiving vehicles are: Alameda County, Sonoma County, San Francisco, Concord, Santa Rosa, San Jose, Oakland, Fremont, the Marin Municipal Water District, and Sonoma County Water Agency. The Transportation Authority of Marin also participated with additional support for the Marin Municipal Water District.
This deployment is one in a series that the BACC and its partners are facilitating to assist public agencies in incorporating electric vehicles (EVs) into their fleets. The 90 EVs will yield operational cost savings of more than $500,000 and avoidance of 2 million pounds of CO2 over five years, according to BACC.
Alameda County has led the collaborative procurement effort for the vehicles and the forthcoming procurement of charging equipment later this year. The County will receive 26 of the 90 vehicles—raising the number of electric or hybrid vehicles in its fleet to more than 50. Alameda County also received recognition this year for its EV work with the Ready, Set, Charge! Bay Area EV Readiness Award in the Most EV-Ready Large Community category.
The EVs—projected to be 64 Ford Focus sedans, 23 Nissan LEAF sedans and 3 Zenith vans—were purchased with $2.8 million in funding support from MTC, which offset the incremental cost of the EVs and charging infrastructure. Local agency vehicle replacement funds made up the balance of the investment.
Sonoma County and the Sonoma County Water Agency purchased 27 vehicles through the program. The addition brings the County’s alternative fuel fleet vehicle total to more than 300, representing more than 30% of the agencies’ cars, vans, and light duty trucks.
The number of vehicles being acquired by each agency is as follows: Alameda County: 26, Concord: 10, Fremont: 2, Marin Municipal Water District: 1, Oakland: 3, San Francisco: 14, San Jose: 3, Santa Rosa: 4, Sonoma County: 22, and Sonoma County Water Agency: 5.
The Bay Area Climate Collaborative (BACC) is a public-private initiative of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group established by the Mayors of San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland to accelerate the clean energy economy. Major partners include Bank of America, PG&E, Environmental Defense Fund, industry partners including ChargePoint, Schneider Electric and ABM, as well as local governments representing more than 70% of the Bay Area population.
Excellent initiative.
One has to go to China to see similar and larger intiatives taking place?
If this was done in every major cities in USA and EU, together with appropriate quick and overnight charge stations,it would be enough to propel initial EV sales and start the switch to EVs by the general population and commercial fleet operators.
Posted by: HarveyD | 09 July 2014 at 08:36 AM
Larger government initiatives of many things are common in China – their government has even less responsibility to the people than ours.
Meanwhile since their inception in 1999, hybrid electric vehicles have saved close to 5.5 million barrels of fuel by 2007 and 9 million barrels by 2009 in the United States according to analyses conducted by the US Department of Energy’s NREL.
And since total amount of fuel consumed in the United States by light-duty vehicles alone is about 9 million barrels per day, these hybrid vehicles will soon (sometime after 2020) have saved less than one week’s worth of auto fuel usage total (even if you include all EVs); this is nothing.
What a monumental waste of over 20 years of lots of taxpayer’s money.
Good thing the private entrepreneurs perfected fracking, because even though government handouts to oil users and producers might be more effective than buying EVs, it is private enterprise that keeps gas affordable in the USA.
So, you think EVs await $5/gal gasoline?
Well, Europe is even slower than we are to adopt EVs.
No, EVs await even more senseless government largesse.
http://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2007/518.html -and- Technical Report NREL/TP-540-42681 March 2009; - - http://4dlab.info/electric-vehicles/electric-vehicles-fuel-savings-from-hybrid-electric-vehicles.pdf
Posted by: ToppaTom | 15 July 2014 at 12:09 AM