Heavy duty electric trucks in port service

Some serious battery powered EVs are going to be prowling the Port of Los Angeles in the near future:

Los Angeles’ green technology sector takes a heavy-duty roll this week with the grand opening of a manufacturing facility in Harbor City that will begin producing fleets of clean, all-electric, heavy-duty trucks capable of hauling 30-ton shipping containers in and around the San Pedro Bay port complex.

…Designed specifically for short-haul or “drayage” operations, this heavy-duty truck can pull a 60,000-pound cargo container at a top speed of 40 mph, and has a range between 30 to 60 miles per battery charge….

An overall calculation of net emissions reductions still needs to be performed to take into account the emissions created in the generation of electric power used to charge the truck’s batteries. However, based on the average emissions generated by the existing fleet of drayage trucks that serve the San Pedro Bay ports, Port of Los Angeles staff estimated the average pollution discharge generated by the estimated 1.2 million truck trips that occurred in 2006 between the ports and a local near-dock railyard (the Intermodal Container Transfer Facility or ICTF). If those 1.2 million truck trips were to be made with zero emission electric trucks, an estimated 35,605.6 tons of tailpipe emissions would be eliminated, including: 21.8 tons per year of Diesel Particulate Matter (DPM), 427.7 tons per year of localized Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) emissions, 168.5 tons per year of Carbon (CO), and 34,987.6 tons per year of Carbon Dioxide (CO2).