New York City Just Spent $10 Million on an Impressive EV Collection

It's hilarious, right? But there’s one thing about New York that you might not have a clue about: it has the largest municipal fleet in the country. And there is a big chance that New York will be the first major American city to have an all-electric municipal fleet in the upcoming years.

Let’s see the numbers. New York City’s fleet operates more than 30,000 vehicles, and 25% of them (over 6,000 units) are pick-up trucks and vans. These are most likely to be replaced by electric vehicles as there are already many such models that carmakers are building.

Until September 2022, 13% (4,000 vehicles) of this huge fleet was replaced with electric vehicles. Amongst them are nearly 850 Chevrolet Bolts or 200 Ford Mustang Mach-Es – these ones are used mainly by law enforcement. The rest of the fleet consists of a wide range of vehicle types and categories.

But what’s more important is that the New York City Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) reached its goal of electrification three years ahead of schedule. The program was initially created in 2015 and aimed to cut 50% of emissions from 2005 levels by 2025.

Now the U.S. Department of Transportation has provided New York City with federal grant funding of $10.1 million. That's enough for Mayor Eric Adams to play Santa and announce the replacement of nearly 925 fossil fuel-powered fleet vehicles with EVs.

What’s on that goodies list for New Yorkers? There are a lot of Fords and Chevys, that’s for sure: 380 Chevrolet Bolt cars, 360 Ford E-Transit vans, and 150 Ford F-150 E-Lightning pick-up trucks. Sorry, Elon, there’s no Tesla, because it’s too expensive, of course.

But there are other EV goodies as pricey as Teslas. Like electric garbage trucks. The New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) is buying seven Mack LR BEV 496 HP refuse trucks. There are also 25 plug-in hybrid street sweepers on the menu.

It's interesting to note that, at this point, DCAS operates the largest EV charging network in New York State. It has over 1,300 charging points available to fleet units and it intends to deploy another 600 in the next 18 months. The money from this federal funding will support the purchase of an additional 315 charging units.

Thanks to the investment from Biden Administration, New York City is now more poised to achieve its goal of a zero-emission fleet by 2035. This is an upgrade from the previous goal of converting all nonemergency cars to EVs by 2040.

If you’d like to see the event and speeches on this occasion, make sure to press the play button on the 49 minutes video below.