By 2025, New York City is planning to employ the largest municipal fleet of electric vehicles in the US, along with a sprawling network of charging stations to go with it.
Under a plan announced by New York Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday, about 2,000 city-owned sedans, used by local agencies like the Transportation Department and the Parks and Recreation Department, would be replaced with electric vehicles like the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf over the next decade.
The city owns about 11,000 sedans and sport utility vehicles, about half of which are used primarily for emergency purposes by the fire and police departments.
Photo: AFP
The electric vehicles — a majority of which are expected to operate entirely without fuel — would make up about half of the city’s non-emergency fleet, officials said.
The program is expected to require a capital investment of between US$50 million and US$80 million over 10 years, to support the creation of additional charging capacity for the vehicles.
De Blasio spokeswoman Amy Spitalnick said fuel savings would help offset additional costs, such as the higher purchase price for electric cars.
The conversion, which would occur in phases as existing vehicles are retired, is projected to help cut the city government’s vehicle emissions by about 50 percent by 2025, Spitalnick said.
Various aspects of the plan must still be sorted out, such as locating additional space to house the necessary charging stations. Some city-owned vehicles are used in consecutive shifts, leaving no time to recharge; other cars are required to travel distances that are beyond the charging capacity of present-day electric batteries.
Major municipalities like Los Angeles have in recent years moved toward buying more electric cars for government use. De Blasio’s team has sought to make energy sustainability a focal point of its policy portfolio, and Spitalnick said the size of New York’s electric fleet would eventually dwarf those of other US cities.
In a statement, the mayor said: “A cleaner, greener fleet is yet another step toward our ambitious, but necessary, sustainability goals.”
Many police and fire vehicles would not be replaced, because the electric models currently available do not meet city requirements.
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