Saving Gas While Fighting Crime

Saving Gas While Fighting Crime in Tallahassee

March 20, 2012 

Police cars in Tallahassee, FL are using EECBG funding from the Recovery Act to reduce idle time and save fuel and taxpayer money. | Courtesy of Tallahassee Police Department.

John Johansen

If you’ve ever watched an episode of the TV show “Cops,” you might have noticed that police cars are often idling – whether from the frequency of ‘routine’ traffic stops, highway incident responses or being on the scene for investigations. This idling can add up to hundreds of gallons of fuel wasted every month -- not the best average for a city during a time of high gas prices and tight city budgets.

To help reverse this trend, the City of Tallahassee, Florida’s Fleet Management Division has designed and built its own Less Idle Time (LIT) package and has installed the equipment in 27 police cars using EECBG funding through the Recovery Act.

The LIT uses batteries and other features to allow police cruisers to have full electrical capability while the engine is off, including the use of emergency lights and air conditioning. Additionally, significant fuel and carbon emissions savings are expected over the normal eight-year vehicle life of a police car. Thanks to reduced engine idle time, LIT could increase the vehicle lifespan by 30 percent (or another two years.)

As with any design built from scratch, there has been a learning curve, but the city's fleet personnel have worked together to resolve each challenge they’ve encountered. The city intends to eventually outfit all police cars with LIT packages. Similar equipment is being developed for other fleet vehicles that idle for several hours a day such as the city’s utility bucket trucks.

More LIT benefits: 

• Can save up to $2,000 a year in fuel per vehicle (based on a 2-hour-per-day usage per vehicle).
• Can eliminate up to 73 pounds of CO2 emissions per-vehicle every day.
• Is installed in the trunk and runs the entire electrical system, including emergency lights and AC
• Works from one to five hours depending on ambient air temperature and thermostat settings.
• Recharges while the engine is running. 

Learn more about the strategies vehicle fleets are using to increase efficiency and reduce petroleum use by joining our Live Twitter Q&A today, March 20 at 12PM EST. Or for more information about energy efficiency projects happening in communities across the country, visit the EECBG website or read about the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. 

EV Technology Accelerates in Colorado

From U.S. Dept. of Energy blog:

EV Technology Accelerates in Colorado

January 13, 2012 

  

Arun Majumdar speaks at Idaho National Lab (INL) during a visit to the site earlier this week. | Photo courtesy of INL.

April Saylor

New Media Specialist, Office of Public Affairs

What does this mean for me?

• One of 48 advanced battery and electric drive projects across the country funded by Recovery Act.
• U.S. will have increased capacity to produce electric-drive vehicles batteries from virtually zero in 2008 up to 500,000 per year in 2015.

While the North American International Auto Show began this week in Detroit, ARPA-E Director Arun Majumadar is visiting another town on the cutting edge of vehicle R&D – Longmont, Colorado, home of UQM Technologies.

Beginning with their first all-composite, battery-electric passenger vehicle in the 1970s, the company has been in the electrification business for 35 years, and is no stranger to the benefits of government-industry partnerships.

Over the years, both the Energy Department and the federal government at large have successfully collaborated with UQM – which has received Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards from the Defense Department as far back as 1983 and received SBIR funding from Energy for eight different projects in electric motors and machines. In 2006, UQM received funding from EERE’s Vehicle Technologies Program via the FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership to design an advanced permanent magnet motor for use in electric drive vehicles.

In 2009, following the success of the FreedomCAR project, UQM was awarded $45 million in Recovery Act funding to support the development of two types of Electric Vehicle (EV) systems: a propulsion/generator system for battery electric, hybrid, and plug-in hybrid passenger vehicles, and power assist motor/generators for parallel hybrid trucks and buses. As a result of this funding, UQM was able to build the Longmont, CO facility that Dr. Majumdar is visiting today. This site alone has the capacity to produce systems for 120,000 electric drive vehicles a year.

In keeping with emerging EV technologies, last year the Vehicles Technology Program also awarded $3 million to UQM to develop a non-rare-earth permanent magnet motor architecture, which will enable the use of low energy magnet technology. Engineering teams at several national labs will work with UQM’s engineers to develop the technology, which will support more affordable and efficient EV technologies and eliminate the need to utilize rare earth metals in these advanced engines.

It’s partnerships like this that are powering the commercialization of emerging EV technology. In fact, UQM’s recent agreement with Electric Vehicles International (EVI) and UPS to produce systems for 100 all-electric delivery vans is not only a great business success, but will be the largest deployment of a zero-tailpipe delivery fleet in California. As a National Clean Fleets Partner, UPS is a leader in reducing oil use in their fleet, and estimates that the use of these vehicles will displace 126,000 gallons of fuel a year that would have been burned running diesel trucks.

Partnerships like these across the private and public sectors are the kind of investments that are helping America win the clean energy race. Including UQM, the Recovery Act provided $2.4 billion in funding to 48 advanced battery and electric drive projects across the country, funding 30 new manufacturing plants like the one Dr. Majumdar is visiting today. Because of these investments, the U.S. will have increased our capacity to produce electric-drive vehicles batteries from virtually zero in 2008 up to 500,000 per year in 2015.