WASHINGTON: The Georgia Ports Authority was going green long before it was cool – or required. So it only makes sense that the GPA – winner of the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2016 Clean Air Excellence award for its innovative programs converting diesel cranes to electric power — would welcome the opportunity to preview electric trucks for on-terminal use. Likewise, Swedish furniture giant IKEA Group – which has stated that its low prices “must never be achieved at the expense of people or the environment” — is looking forward to trying the all-electric tractor in its cavernous distribution center a few miles upriver from the port.
The preview is sponsored by Georgia Power’s “Will it Work?” program – an initiative designed to get environmentally friendly technologies into the hands of companies that can use them. It will allow both the ports and IKEA to put the jockey truck to use for several weeks to get a sense of how it will perform under normal operating conditions, said Osman Bholat, Georgia Power’s electric vehicle segment manager. “Our goal is to bring the vehicle in, put it to use over a period of time and then give the company real data with which to evaluate its performance,” Bholat said. “For starters, the truck will have to do everything its diesel counterpart does – and do it equally as well. Both of these companies work their trucks hard over two shifts per day. “We’ll be looking at fuel and maintenance labor savings both per truck and across the fleet.”
Bholat said he expects energy costs to operate the electric truck to be less than a third of a similar diesel-powered truck, with maintenance costs coming in at less than half. While IKEA has three diesel-powered jockey trucks in its local operation, Georgia Ports has 300 such vehicles on terminal, making it easy to convince West Coast electric vehicle manufacturer BYD that this was a market to explore, Bholat said.
The demo vehicle — a BYD Class 8 yard tractor – is expected to arrive the first of next month, spend a few weeks at IKEA, then move to GPA’s Garden City Terminal for a month. Headquartered in Shenzhen, China, BYD Co. Ltd. is the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer, in both consumer and commercial/industrial vehicles, and a global leader and innovator in battery technology. The BYD Class 8 yard tractor utilizes the first battery specifically designed for vehicle electrification. With the company’s proprietary iron phosphate technology at its core, the truck, which is manufactured at BYD’s facility in Lancaster, Calif., is capable of providing 15 hours of operation between charges.
