Atlanta launches electric car fleet program - ecomento.com
Advocates are making a big push to put electric cars in the driveways of more U. S. citizens, but privately-owned passenger vehicles aren’t the only ones on the road. Government agencies operate large fleets of vehicles, which could potentially be electrified as well. The City Council recently approved legislation that will give Atlanta one of the largest municipal fleets of electric vehicles in the U. S. by the end of this year, officials say. The fleet program dovetails with Atlanta’s “Power to Change Plan,” which seeks to reduce vehicle emissions in the city 20 percent by 2020. The fleet will actually include a mix of all-electric and plug-in hybrid cars, with the Chevrolet Volt, Ford... There will be 50 vehicles in all, and officials expect each of them to save 550 to 600 gallons of fuel per year compared to the cars they replace, and reduce maintenance costs by 40 percent. To coordinate the effort, the Atlanta city government will work with plug-in fleet services company Vision Fleet, which employs a novel financing model to make plug-in vehicles more attractive to fleet customers. This allows customers to pay for cars over time, eliminating the typically higher upfront costs of electrified vehicles. Vision Fleet will also use data analytics to attempt to improve the efficiency of the fleet, and reduce the city’s ownership costs. Source: ecomento.com
