By Scott Etkin
The New York City Department of Parks & Recreation (Parks) has added 86 electric vehicles (EVs) — specifically, Ford F-150 Lightning pickup trucks — to its electric vehicle fleet.
“The F-150 Lightning features one of the largest capacity batteries available in any electric truck, ensuring efficiency when caring for the city’s parks and public spaces,” said a joint announcement by Parks and the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS), which provided the trucks. The pickups “feature a standard EPA-estimated range of 240 miles.”
The first round of pickups arrived at Parks in late August, and the rest are expected by the end of the year. This brings the total number of EVs operated by Parks to nearly 600, making up 36 percent of its total vehicle fleet, an agency representative emailed WSR. All NYC government agencies are working toward “electrifying” their fleets, and, so far, Parks has the most EVs of any agency, he said.
The Parks spokesperson estimated that the agency has 85 EVs based on the Upper West Side in Central Park, Riverside Park, and Morningside Park. This number is fluid, because Central Park – where the Parks Department’s has its headquarters — houses many vehicles and has a large number of charging stations, so vehicles might charge there, but be deployed elsewhere.
In general, the majority of Parks vehicles are charged at the sites where they are used. “Parks currently has 510 charging ports and 309 charging stations at 82 different sites citywide — the largest charging infrastructure of any City agency,” the representative wrote to WSR.
Recently, the City Council passed a bill stating that NYC government agencies should only purchase zero emission light- and medium-duty vehicles after 2025, and heavy-duty vehicles after 2028. Notably, in September, 2022, the city reached its 2025-goal of transitioning 4,000 vehicles in its fleet to electric vehicles — three years ahead of schedule. “The transition to electric vehicles is helping to improve air quality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and offer cost savings on maintenance and fuel costs for city government and New York City taxpayers,” the announcement said.
The transition to EVs nationwide has been uneven. EVs have gained mainstream traction in many parts of the world, including Europe, Scandinavia, and China. But, though the latest numbers show that EV sales are growing at a “breakthrough rate” in the United States, they still sit at only about seven percent of total car sales, according to Bloomberg.
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This is great news. Many city dwellers have problems with where and when to recharge but the parks department has buildings where they can do thisbfairly easily.
Do these F150s use lithium ion batteries?
Or do they use the much safer (and yes available) lithium iron phosphate batteries? The base model Tesla 3 does, not that the Tesla would replace a pickup.
“The transition to EVs nationwide has been uneven. EVs have gained mainstream traction in many parts of the world, including Europe, Scandinavia, and China.”
Well, the batteries don’t charge quickly, even with “fast” chargers. They are severely range degraded below 15 degrees F, so useless in Minnesota out side of the Twin Cities and useless in a vast swath of upstate NY.
Most of the batteries are lithium-ion and very dangerous in a fire.
And the auto pilot system in Teslas is exceedingly dangerous.
Except for the dangerous battery type, they’re a good idea for things like NYC Parks, and the technology (with lead acid batteries) could have been adopted 50 years ago, when yes, EV vans existed for big factory complexes.
Let this NYC agency be a beacon of hope for other cities.
These truck only get about half the range they claim to get as most owners will attest and at 70-90 K a piece with battery replacement at 5-7 years for 20K.
Yes,EVs are way over rated, But, except for the fire prone batteries, they are good bet for things like big cities’ (not in the far north, so not Montreal) vehicle fleets.
Another waste of taxpayer money by libs and the so-called “mayor” Adams. This money should be spent keeping NYers safe and running this city, not on some toy tonka trucks for park rangers to play around on.
GREAT news about more electric vehicles in CP. But one has to ask the question, will these mean more parked vehicles all over the park. Who knew the Conservancy had such a HUGE capital expenditure budget that large areas of the park have been converted to parking lots? The area south of West 81st comes to mind as does the reservoir bridle path. There is also all the park vehicles parked along the whole drive leading to 5th Ave. yet you rarely see all those vehicles doing anything. What comes to mind is Joni Mitchell, “They take paradise and put up a parking lot. Bop, Bop, Bop.”