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The City of Thunder Bay’s effort to electrify its fleet of vehicles continues, with two new electric pickup trucks set to hit the road as early as next week.
On Thursday, the city introduced two new Ford F-150 Lightning pickups, which will serve as transit support vehicles, said Doug Glena, the city’s general manager of fleet services.
“The on-road inspectors will run these trucks,” Glena said. “We have an issue with a bus on the road, they’ll be used for that customer service response.”
“Everything having to do with transit to support the transit operations to run efficiently.”
Glena said operators will have some brief training on the new vehicles on Friday, and they could be on the road as early as Monday.
The city will then spend some time evaluating the vehicles to see how they compare to gas-powered pickups. In a media release, the city said the new trucks will reduce carbon emissions by about 25 tonnes of CO2 annually; a gas-powered pickup uses about 5,400 litres of fuel per year.
Maintenance, too, will be simple, Glena said.
“On these tracks, there’s no engine, there’s no rear end, there’s no transmission, there’s an electric drive motor,” he said. “When it comes to components such as brakes, they’re very similar, so that annual brake maintenance would be done exactly the same way.”
“Where we’ll save is on the engine maintenance, the the transmission maintenance.”
When it comes to the electric drive motors themselves, any maintenance, repairs, or service can be handled by a local Ford dealership, Glena said.
The city has also installed two chargers at its Fort William Road transit building; the total cost for the two trucks, and the chargers, was about $206,000, Glena said, and some of the cost was covered by federal and provincial funding.
Glena said research has shown the trucks perform well during Canadian winters, as well.
“Regina has had a Ford Lightning for over a year now,” he said. “They’ve had decent performance in the winter time with them.”
Coun. Andrew Foulds said he hoped the two new trucks prove to be another step toward the total electrification of the city’s fleet.
“I think this is one more example where the City of Thunder Bay is clearly demonstrating leadership on the environment file,” he said. “We have for a very, very long time taken climate change [and] sustainability very seriously, and this is one more example on how this city continues to lead in the north and across the province and across the nation.”
“I think our city has taken on a lot of initiatives that move the city towards net zero and climate adaptation, and I think that this is one step in perhaps a bit of a marathon when it comes to the total electrification of our fleet.”
“That’s the ultimate goal.”
The city also has one electric ice resurfacer, which is used to clean the ice at the Fort William Gardens.
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