Aiming to save fuel and advance alternative-energy plans, the Army, Navy and Air Force intend to buy thousands of battery-powered, 35-mile-an-hour electric cars and light trucks to provide on-base transport, senior Army officials said.
“The Neighborhood Electric Vehicle [NEV] will be at Fort Belvoir, [Va.,] before Dec. 15. Our goal is to have the secretary [of the Army, Pete Geren] there to drive in one of the first ones,” said Paul Bollinger, deputy assistant Army secretary for energy and partnerships. “We are having bumper stickers put on and decals on the doors which say ‘Army Green, Army Strong.’ ”
The Army plans to order the street-legal NEVs from E-Z-Go, Native American Biofuels International and other electric-car makers. E-Z-Go, which is a subsidiary of defense giant Textron, makes golf carts that are listed online at about $1,300 each.
“We’re excited about this,” said James Cooke, CEO of Native American Bio-fuels International, Arlington, Va. “We’ve been working on alternative energy for about three-and-a-half years. We’ve innovated with Native American tribes all over the country.”
Next year, 800 cars will be delivered and 4,000 over the next three years. Ultimately, “we should be able to go to at least 10,000 vehicles overall,” Bollinger said.
The Army’s plan has persuaded its sister services to jump on board.
“The good news is that the Air Force and Navy have come to us and said that they want to piggyback on the order. Previously, the Air Force was looking at low-speed vehicles, which are actually still gasoline vehicles. We’ve skipped that and we are going straight to electric. We are eliminating the fuel issue, period,” Bollinger said.
An Air Force official confirmed his service’s involvement in the electric car purchase, but could not immediately provide details.
The Army is moving quickly; the purchase plans were unveiled last month as part of the service’s ambitious new energy strategy, which also calls for the construction of solar and geothermal facilities.
Bollinger said each electric car would use an average of about $400 in electricity per year, compared to the roughly $2,400 in fuel needed to run a gas-powered car, citing General Services Administration figures. Moreover, the 4,000 electric cars will save 11.5 million gallons of fuel per year, he said.
Daniel Goure, vice president of the Lexington Institute, a Va.-based think tank, noted that the price of fuel is nearly half of its record high earlier this year.
“In a few months, the savings that they could have expected has dropped by half,” he said.
The first batch of vehicles will likely be leased per year from Native American Biofuels International, Bollinger said. The Army expects to continue to lease the electric cars on a yearly basis and possibly buy them down the road.
“We will not be paying any more for the NEV than for a standard gasoline-powered vehicle,” Bollinger said.
The NEVs, now powered by lead-acid batteries, may one day be operated by lithium batteries, which are able to store and dispense larger amounts of energy at a lighter weight compared with lead-acid batteries.
The Army hopes to inspire a broader market for electric cars and has been telling automakers about the plans.
“Chevy is looking at making the Volt, a street vehicle that will go highway speeds. We don’t need that because the speed limit on our installation is 30 mph. We don’t need something that big or expensive, but we might need something that powerful. So in the future, if they are able to make it, that is great,” Bollinger said.
The US Army is going Green in a new way...
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Originally Posted by Strattios
