City first in nation to meet green Hemi

Dodge Ram pickup trucks with Hemi V8 engines are going green and Yuma city employees will be the first in the country to drive them.

Yuma is the very first city in the United States to receive delivery of a demonstration fleet of the latest in Ram trucks being developed, which it unveiled to the public on Wednesday. In exchange for use of the vehicles at no charge, the city will participate in real world testing of the trucks.

But these are no ordinary trucks.

They are the first in a test fleet of 140 units of state-of-the-art plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) to be tested in communities around the country over the next three years. The trucks used blended power, running off either electricity or gas, or both.

The delivery comes at a time when the city has an aging fleet but little money to replace them, noted City Administrator Greg Wilkinson. “This will allow us to replace 10 vehicles that we couldn't afford otherwise.”

Yuma employees will drive the Rams during their normal course of work, putting the trucks through their paces on city streets and even off road and in Yuma's extreme summer temperatures.

Eight of the trucks will be outfitted as police vehicles to be used on patrol. The remaining two will be used by the Utilities Department for customer service, such as water hookups, shutdowns and meter reading. Those are functions for which city vehicles are typically heavily driven.

That suits Chrysler engineer Curtis Semak just fine.

“We want them driven in real world conditions,” he said. “We want to see what works and what doesn't.”

Another 10 trucks are slated to delivery this month to Clark County, Nev. Other partner cities will include San Francisco and Sacramento, Calif.; Austin, Texas; and Kansas City, Mo.; test vehicles will also be delivered in North Dakota, Massachusetts, Hawaii and Arizona.

Chrysler selected locations to evaluate temperature extremes, urban traffic cycles and diverse climates and geographies, Semak said. The trucks are capable of operating in extreme temperatures from -20 degrees to 125 degrees.

At the end of the three-year project, he expects to have 7 million miles of real world testing on the 140 vehicles.

The trucks are set up to send regular reports back to the manufacturer by satellite feed. There also will be occasional visits from Chrysler personnel to Yuma and the other partnering cities, he explained.

Mayor Al Krieger observed that with his background in construction, he knows only too well the toll Yuma's summer weather can take on a vehicle. “There's no better place to test them.”

This isn't the first foray into electric powered vehicles for the city.

“This is another opportunity to showcase that the city of Yuma is willing to try and accept new technologies,” said city of Yuma Fleet Manager Charlie Caudill who worked with Chrysler for two years to land the partnership. He added that the city has used hybrids in its fleet since 2001, and previously tested experimental vehicles in the early 1990s.

Chief Jerry Geier said he's pleased with the performance of the vehicles Yuma Police Department already has in its fleet and is “really looking forward to the trucks ... getting them outfitted and out on patrol and putting them to use.”

He said the trucks offer several advantages. Besides a fuel efficiency of at least 32 miles per gallon in the city, the Hemi engine offers plenty of power when needed. And with its ability to generate 6.6 kilowatts of electricity, the truck can provide emergency power when needed, such as for spotlights at an accident.

In fact, the truck can generate enough electricity to power an average size house.

Funding for the demonstration program is provided in part by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 through the Department of Energy's Transportation Electrification Initiative. This grant, including $48 million in funds from DOE and $49.4 million from Chrysler Group, was designed to develop vehicles that will be cost-efficient for consumers, satisfy safety concerns of daily travel without recharging and help reduce dependence on foreign oil. The project is due to run through June 2014.

Despite early stereotypes of hybrid gas-electric vehicles, these trucks have all the muscle one would expect from a four-wheel-drive Ram.

The Chrysler Group also is developing a similar fleet of 25 Town & Country minivans with plug-in hybrid technology for demonstration and evaluation that will be allocated to select cities later this year.

Joyce Lobeck can be reached at jlobeck@yumasun.com or 539-6853.