Skip to main content

Zero emission delivery vehicle project begins in Houston

The Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC) has teamed up with the Center for Transportation and the Environment (CTE) and Smith Electric Vehicles Corporation to reduce vehicle emissions from delivery trucks in the region. As part of a US Department of Energy (DOE) sponsored effort, local fleets will replace existing diesel delivery vehicles with thirty all-electric medium and heavy-duty Smith Newton trucks for daily operations in the Houston-Galveston area.
September 2, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
The Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC) has teamed up with the Center for Transportation and the Environment (CTE) and 3822 Smith Electric Vehicles Corporation to reduce vehicle emissions from delivery trucks in the region.  As part of a US Department of Energy (DOE) sponsored effort, local fleets will replace existing diesel delivery vehicles with thirty all-electric medium and heavy-duty Smith Newton trucks for daily operations in the Houston-Galveston area.

The project is designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of all-electric delivery vehicles to perform at the same level of operation as similarly-sized diesel delivery vehicles while significantly reducing emissions and petroleum use.  By deploying emission trucks for this program, H-GAC expects to reduce petroleum consumption by over 250,000 gallons of diesel fuel over the two-year demonstration period. The project will have additional impact with an expected reduction in GHG emissions by 37.5 million tons of carbon equivalents per year and an expected reduction in criteria pollutants of over 2,000 tons per year.

The Smith Newton trucks include the company’s proprietary Smith Power, with variable 40-120 kWh battery pack options; Smith Drive, and Smith Link, an onboard system for monitoring the vehicle’s vital statistics.  The vehicles that will be deployed under this grant are based on Smith’s latest production model Series 2000, which has been fully deployed in several locations across the country.

Each Smith Newton will be delivered with an electric vehicle charging station (EVSE).  Fully recharging the vehicle will take approximately 6 to 10 hours per night, depending on the size of the battery pack and the state of charge when the vehicle returns to the fleet depot.

The H-GAC zero emission truck project will serve as a pioneer for this innovative clean technology by helping fleets deploy all-electric delivery trucks that will improve their fleet operations and benefit the local community. CTE, a non-profit and leader in alternative transportation technology deployments, will manage the project, collect operational data, and report on the project’s impact.   The combined efforts of project partners will help further the objective of developing a market for this advanced electric transportation technology.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • OPINION: ITS must be included in EU Green Deal
    September 14, 2022
    To reach the objectives of the European Green Deal, a classification system has been developed to identify environmentally-sustainable activities. However, Richard Lax of Kapsch TrafficCom is worried that it might not have the intended effect – and ITS could lose out as a result…
  • Profitable niches in the electric vehicles market
    December 18, 2015
    Vehicles are electrifying at a breakneck speed and they are being completely reinvented with developments in many components and systems, according to a report by IDTechEx Research. Disruptive change and significant technological innovation is now being seen across all forms of electric vehicles for land, water and air. The fruits of all this are spectacular – from the vehicles themselves to over US$500 billion market opportunity that will be created by 2026. IDTechEx Research analyses and forecasts eve
  • New national body to drive uptake of electric vehicles in Australia
    June 2, 2017
    A new industry-led national body that aims to drive the uptake of electric vehicles (EV) in Australia has been launched in Canberra. A total of 17 organisations, including non-profit organisation ClimateWorks Australia, Tesla, Audi, BMW, Jaguar Land Rover, infrastructure firm JET charge and the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria have joined the Electric Vehicle Council.
  • Zero-emission transport at centre of Democrat ‘Green New Deal’
    February 13, 2019
    Clean and affordable transportation and zero-emission vehicle infrastructure are at the heart of the US Democrats’ ‘Green New Deal’ package. The proposals seek to move the US away from fossil fuels and other sources of emissions that cause global warming within the next decade. The package says these goals can be reached by reached by a ten-year “national mobilisation” which include an overhaul in transportation systems to eliminate pollution and greenhouse as much as technologically feasible, repai