The Houston-Galveston Area Council is partnering with the Center for Transportation and the Environment and Smith Electric Vehicles Corp. to replace existing diesel-powered delivery vehicles with all-electric medium- and heavy-duty Smith Newton trucks in the Houston-Galveston area.

The H-GAC Zero Emission Truck project will demonstrate the effectiveness of all-electric delivery vehicles to perform at the same level of operation as similarly sized diesel delivery vehicles. The deployment of 30 trucks is planned, which will reduce petroleum consumption by over 250,000 gallons of diesel over a two-year period.

The Newton trucks feature Smith's proprietary Smith Power system, which has 40 kWh to 120 kWh battery-pack options, and the Smith Drive and Smith Link platforms. The vehicles that will be deployed under this grant intiative are based on Smith’s latest production-model Series 2000, which has been deployed in several locations in the U.S., the company says.

Smith notes that an electric vehicle charging station will be delivered as a part of the project. Full recharging of each vehicle takes approximately six to 10 hours per night.