2Sustain

Last week, President Obama visited the Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA) manufacturing facility in Mount Holly, North Carolina, where he announced a new $1 billion National Community Deployment Challenge to spur deployment of clean, advanced vehicles in communities around the country.

DTNA is a partner in the Energy Department’s SuperTruck initiative, which is focused on increasing the fuel efficiency of long haul trucks (aka, 18-wheelers) by 50 percent by 2015.

While these particular trucks represent only 4 percent of the on-road vehicles in America, they are responsible for almost 20 percent of the country’s on-road fuel consumption, and this class of vehicle currently consumes more than 30 billion gallons of gasoline each year.

In order to achieve the SuperTruck imitative goal, companies like Daimler are developing and improving a number of vehicle technologies, including engine efficiency, aerodynamics waste heat recovery and hybridization.  Through these types of improvements, the Energy Department estimates fuel economy increases could save long-haul truckers more than $15,000 per truck per year in fuel costs. (In an earlier post, I reported that MIT researchers also have identified significant cost savings for businesses that use electric vehicles to make deliveries on an everyday basis in big cities.) (more…)

New research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) shows that electric vehicles are not just environmentally friendly; they also have the potential to improve the bottom line for many kinds of businesses.

Granted, the up-front costs of electric vehicles can be significant. A company looking to purchase an electric-powered delivery truck today will likely have to shell out nearly $150,000 –compared to about $50,000 for the same kind of truck with a standard internal-combustion engine.

But, the researchers at MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL) found that electric vehicles used to make deliveries on an everyday basis in big cities can cost 9 to 12 percent less to operate than trucks powered by diesel engines. What’s more, as battery costs continue to drop, the business case for electric vehicles will only get better, according to Jarrod Goentzel, director of the Renewable Energy Delivery Project at CTL and one of four co-authors of the new study.

The CTL study was conducted using data collected by the international office supplier Staples, as well as ISO New England, the nonprofit firm that runs New England’s electric power grid.

Using that data, the researchers modeled the costs for a fleet of 250 delivery trucks, and they examined alternate scenarios in which the whole fleet used one of three kinds of motors: purely electric engines, hybrid gas-electric engines and conventional diesel engines.

The researchers analyzed outcomes if the trucks in the fleet were driven 70 miles a day for 253 work days per year, with diesel gasoline costing $4 per gallon. They found that: (more…)

Earlier this month, PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay North America announced the addition of ten new trucks to its growing all-electric fleet – a move that pushes the company closer to its goal of becoming the most fuel-efficient commercial fleet in the country.

Frito-Lay is working with Smith Electric Vehicles, the nation’s top manufacturer of battery-electric commercial trucks and a leader in the development of commercial electric trucks designed to operate at peak effectiveness in urban environments. All told, Frito-Lay says it plans to deploy 176 all-electric vehicles in the US and Canada this year.

Some benefits of these trucks include: (more…)

Late last month, UPS released the latest edition of its annual sustainability report, and once again, the company has managed to reduce the amount of fuel it’s using to deliver each package in the United States.

Interestingly, the company’s US package volume rose 1.8 percent in 2010 compared to 2009, and yet UPS reduced the amount of fuel consumed per package by 3.3 percent. The company attributed the improvement to:

• deploying the right vehicle on the right routes,
• using technology to minimize the miles driven and
• focusing on how behavior can affect fuel use.

All told, technology has enabled UPS to avoid driving more than 63.5 million miles in 2010 with an associated emissions avoidance of 68,000 metric tonnes. As remarkable as it sounds, UPS estimates that distance is the equivalent of 251,987 trips to the International Space Station.

How, exactly, has the company used technology to reduce fuel consumption? According to a press release, UPS has specifically improved: (more…)

Last week, Kohl’s Department Stores released its first annual corporate sustainability report.

The report, available at www.kohlsgreenscene.com, includes updates on the company’s primary environmental strategies: (more…)