Transforming Gas Guzzling Fleets: The Time is Now
Editor’s Note: This is a guest contribution by the Founder and President of Rapid Electric Vehicles (REV).
This past week I have spent considerable time traveling throughout California, Oregon and Washington discussing the transformation of fleet vehicles to electric. My company, Vancouver-based REV (Rapid Electric Vehicles), has created a fully integrated solution to transform existing fleet vehicles including the Ford Escape into a 100 percent electric vehicle with long-range AC drive systems, integrated data management, charging stations, fleet charging management and Vehicle 2 Grid.
- » See also: Is the Renault-Nissan Alliance Going in Two Different Electric Car Directions?
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I met with municipalities, city fleet managers, energy companies and government officials about the immediate need to transform gas-guzzling fleets into green driving machines. There is much talk about the preverbal chicken and egg problem—what will come first the EV’s or infrastructure. Indeed, according to Felix Kramer at CalCars.org, ‘new plug-in vehicles won’t arrive quickly enough to achieve the vital goal of near-term (next 10-15 years) reduction in petroleum use to gain energy security and greenhouse gas benefits.’ The fact is EV fleets can be a reality today through innovative measures. The City of Inglewood, California is leading by example by committing to transform existing fleet vehicles to 100 electric. Other California cities are doing the same and encouraging their peers to go green and save green.
Benefits to transforming gas guzzlers include:
- Compliance to clean air mandates through the elimination of emissions
- Savings in fuel and maintenance costs and increase fleet-service life (a fleet could replace $200 of monthly fuel expenses per vehicle with a $20 increase in their electric bill per vehicle).
- Taxpayer dollars saving and decreasing emissions that affect air quality
- Significantly reduced operating costs
- Simplification of how fleet managers track and calculate emission reductions
- Reusing existing fleet vehicles that saves over 20 tons from manufacturing
CalCars.org is encouraging organizations to “fix” a large fraction of the existing 250 million U.S. vehicles and 900 million globally to run partly or fully on electricity. This will enable millions of cleaner, more efficient vehicles that cost less money to operate, and create thousands of jobs that will provide new revenue streams to automakers from vehicles they have already sold. For the past year CalCars.org has been working to develop a campaign to promote promising designs about conversions and spread the word about US tax credits. If you would like to learn more, visit Calcars.org. You can also sign up for 1 Block Off the Grid’s plug-in hybrid project).
About REV:
Rapid Electric Vehicles (REV) is a leader in electric vehicle solutions for fleets, delivering a fully integrated solution for transforming and electrifying fleets. The complete solution provides everything fleets need to transform their existing passenger vehicles into 100 percent electric vehicles including: fast-install AC drive technology, integrated data management, charging stations, fleet charging management and V2G. The REV product eliminates vehicle emissions with a systems-integrated approach designed specifically for fleet operations while saving fuel and maintenance costs and increasing fleet-service life. For more information on REV visit http://www.rapidelectricvehicles.com. Follow REV on Twitter.
…wow… gas2, do you need more writers? may I recommend talking to college students. Anything is better than pointless articles like this one.
If your going to do this please choose carefully because again this seems like another sales pitch
two strikes…
htl,
How is this pointless? The majority of our readers enjoy having the ability to get a look into the perspective of industry executives and leaders. After all, they are the ones shaping available consumer choices of the future. Without an informed interaction with them, you would only be getting one perspective. If you don’t want to read the article, by all means skip it. If you have a particular issue with the author, please ask it in the form of a meaningful question(s), instead of baseless criticism.
Thanks much.
I sure hope you were paid well enough to justify your prostitution to the vendor of this product.
This reads like an op-ed by Bill Gates expounding on the merits of Windows.
Hi Nick - This guy was self promoting, nothing more or nothing less. Most of these guys (quite minor companies) shape nothing more than their own lawn.
Before they get so high on whatever about electric vehicles and ‘fixing’ a good share of the 250 million in the US they might stop to think about the balance of the infrastructure.
Electric systems will require major changes. This is not something that can be done in isolation.
I’m with Nick on this one - sorry htl - I found your criticism pointless. The author of the article was very transparent about his role (and thus of course bias). We are at an interesting point - at which conversion to alternative vehicles is needing a kick start - anything that can contribute - gets a thumbs up from me. I did find the article short on details. A 100 vehicle fleet can save $18 000 a month in fuel costs (over $200,000 per year). But what is the conversion cost? What is the range for the vehicles? What infrastructure needs to be in place? etc.
I was with this guy until he misspelled proverbial. Kinda hard to focus on the message after that.
Hi all, interesting comments! I am the writer of this article, and the Founder of REV.
Pardon the typo. I hope it didn’t stop you from reading entirely.
My own self-promoting aside, the bottom line is this: There are WAY too many cars on the road keeping us dependent on oil. Cars last 16 years on average now. 10 million new cars sell every year, and 5 million are retired. That number was 17 million in 2007. If you do the math, and according to JD Power, there will be 500 million cars on the road in 2020. No one believes more than 1 million cars sold in 2015 will be plug-in vehicles. By 2020, less than 1% of all cars will have plugs on them. Indeed, there are only 1.2 million hybrids of 300 million today.
So that means 99 of every 100 people in North America will still be burning gas in their cars.
This is a problem! Given our commitments to getting off oil. I hope you all consider the importance of plug-in vehicle conversions. We need WAY more companies than just REV committed to this new aftermarket industry. We need to and can, together, convert a lot more cars than can be produced as new plug-ins in the next 10 years.
Jay Giraud