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.

Related Content

  • January 25, 2012
    Flexible, cost efficient bus trailers adapt to passenger demand
    The cost, environmental and other benefits of the bus trailer concept are obvious. Used in several areas of Germany, as well as Austria, Switzerland, and Luxembourg, vehicle sizes can be adapted to passenger demand. The Ruebenacker group, a public transport provider in the Black Forest region of Germany, is one of more than 20 bus operators in the country that have deployed bus trailers, also referred to as bus trains. The company owns 81 buses and transports nearly six million passengers a year in the Blac
  • March 1, 2018
    ABB to supply fast chargers for Norway electric bus project
    Swiss power and automation company Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) will supply four Heavy Vehicle Chargers (HVCs) to Trondheim’s dual-manufacturer electric bus program as part of the Norwegian city's commitment to mass electric transportation. The solutions will be delivered in February 2019 and will charge 25 Volvo buses and 10 Heuliez models across four routes. Called HVC 450P, the fast chargers are said to recharge batteries in three to six minutes and provide 450 kW Direct Current output power. They utilise
  • April 15, 2013
    Port of Seattle rolls out truck tag program to reduce emissions
    As part of a larger effort to curb emissions from port-related vehicles, the Port of Seattle and its container terminal operating tenants have gone live with a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag program in support of the port’s Clean Truck Initiative. The program roll-out was a success, involving an average of over 2,000 truck gate moves a day with less than two percent of all port registered trucks reporting issues, which were able to be resolved in most cases within fifteen minutes. By gathering t
  • April 16, 2012
    Fuel cell system sets record
    UTC Power, a United Technologies company, has announced that one of its latest generation PureMotion System Model 120 fuel cell powerplants for hybrid-electric transit buses has surpassed 10,000 operating hours in real-world service with its original cell stacks and no cell replacements. This powerplant is aboard an Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District (AC Transit) bus operating in the Greater Oakland, California area.