We’ve seen electrical pickup vans, electrical faculty buses, and even a number of electrical 18-wheelers. However the place are the electrical aerial work platform vans, recognized colloquially as bucket vans? Con Edison could have a solution. The vitality utility for New York Metropolis, and one of many largest vitality firms within the US, is teaming up with a Canadian producer so as to add battery-powered bucket vans to its fleet by 2022.
ConEd’s fleet isn’t precisely huge — the utility owns round 300 bucket vans — however the firm hopes to ship a sign to producers that the time has come to impress a majority of these autos.
“Medium- and heavy-duty vans are tougher to impress than vehicles, however the buy of our first all-electric bucket truck reveals the market is actual as we speak and it’ll solely speed up from right here,” ConEd CEO Tim Cawley stated in an announcement. “Whereas initially small in scope, this represents an necessary step in Con Edison’s journey towards fleet electrification.”
ConEd is working with two Canadian producers, Lion Electrical and Posi-Plus, on the design and manufacturing of its electrical truck. It should have a Lion8 all-electric chassis, which underpins a number of of Lion’s electrical autos, in addition to a crane and cherry picker to assist ConEd employees attain energy strains and different elevated infrastructure.
The automobile is scheduled for supply in early 2022, which will likely be adopted by its use in a pilot program. If profitable, ConEd says the bucket truck will likely be built-in as a part of its fleet of vans that maintains the overhead electrical system in each New York Metropolis and Westchester County.
The category 8 truck will get an estimated 130 miles on a single cost. The battery will take eight hours to recharge when plugged into two AC Degree 2 chargers, ConEd stated.
ConEd has been working to get rid of the emissions from its fleet earlier than this announcement. As of final 12 months, each new light-duty automobile that the corporate buys is a plug-in hybrid or electrical. The corporate stated it’s exploring a spread of applied sciences to scale back its fossil gasoline use in medium- and heavy-duty autos, and it could add extra all-electric bucket vans to its fleet sooner or later. Although it wouldn’t say when it plans to utterly section out fossil fuel-burning autos from its fleet.
