Module 4: Electric vehicles in municipal fleets

Municipalities are increasingly under pressure to adapt to changing environmental and economic conditions. For long-term stability, their asset and operations planning must meet both economic and environmental goals¹. Electric vehicles (EVs) can be introduced in municipal fleets and fleets of municipal enterprises such as vehicles for waste collection, street cleaning, transport and other public services².

The objective of using EVs in municipal fleets is to reduce emissions and to serve as role model for private vehicle owners. The municipality can demonstrate the applicability of electric vehicles and can benefit from own experience in applying new technologies when designing a supportive framework for electric mobility. Municipalities can gain extensive experiences and understanding of EVs’ application – real life EV-use, energy consumption, impact on the environment and effect on the electricity grid if the EV application is monitored in detail. The municipal EV fleet can contribute to electric mobility awareness raising if the vehicles are labelled in order to gain public and media attention².

Module 4 provides essential insight into issues related to deployment of electric vehicles in municipal fleets. The training unit of module 4 deals with following topics:

• Types of electric vehicles (pedelecs, e-cars, e-vans, e-trucks…)
• Municipal fleets to be considered
• Infrastructure and charging requirements
• Publicity