Over the past several months, the Ford F-150 Lightning has earned its fair share of accolades, including 2023 MotorTrend Truck of the Year, a Kelley Blue Book Best Buy Award for Best Electric Truck, Edmunds‘ Best of the Best Award, and 2023 North American Truck of the Year. However, it isn’t just retail customers that are flocking to the EV pickup, but also commercial fleets, with entities such as New York City, Sunrun, and the U.S. Forest Service, all purchasing multiple units of the Ford F-150 Lightning in recent months. Now, that list continues to grow, as Southern California Edison (SCE) – an electric utility provider – recently took delivery of 15 F-150 Lightning pickups.
SCE is aiming to go all-electric in its fleet by 2030, and this is just the first step in that process. “Electrifying our fleet is really important to California because of the air quality issues we have in our local communities and globally to help reverse the devastating impact of harmful greenhouse gas emissions,” said Todd Carlson, SCE principal manager of Fleet Asset Management.
SCE estimates that in pursuing its 2030 fleet electrification goals, it will save more than 620,000 gallons of fuel annually and eliminate close to 6,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions a year. That would be the same amount saved by taking 7,600 cars off the road for a year or planting and growing nearly 600,000 trees for 10 years. When its fleet of more than 6,400 vehicles, trailers and off-road equipment is fully electrified, SCE will reduce its annual fuel consumption by nearly 4.5 million gallons.
“We’re very excited to have electric pickup trucks now as an option,” Carlson said. “We have plans to order nearly 250 as quickly as we can get them, hundreds more in 2024, and then about 100 a year for the next decade.”
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Comments
I received the email to order my Lightning that I put a deposit on in May of 2021. The problem is that only the Lariat and Platinum are available. Can you shed any light on this?
I wonder if they had to contract for the FordPro Charging solutions like the smaller fleet companies, before they got their allocation for the 15? Ford has worked out a plan for limited allocation to the small fleets with 15 or more VINs registered, started at 4 per quarter but is now pegged at two per quarter, with a promise to build in the quarter following the order, but they make it clear that they will give special consideration to companies who have Charger contracts – special meaning, 1st priority and generally, no build without that signed contract.
The only problem is SCE can’t supply enough power to charge all the electric vehicles on the road now. Add in projected power deficits for the next 10 years. And you have a state that grinds to a stop every summer
There are always announcements of potential summer brownouts in CA but they are either short lived or avoided when customers dial it up a bit to reduce peak load. In addition, SCE invested after 2020 and 2021 to add more peak time capacity.
Head of SCE thinks they will be ok to deliver the juice to EV’s.
energized.edison. com/stories/embracing-the-challenge-of-a-clean-energy-future
Ps. Besides, most vehicles charge at night.