City of Durham

At a Glance

Industry

Government/Public Administration

Project Type

Zero Emission Vehicles, Freight and Logistics

Year

2022

Location

Durham, NC

Summary

Tunmise Raji identified light-duty vehicles that are ready for electrification in the City of Durham’s fleet and potential charging station locations.

Goals

The City of Durham aims to electrify a substantial portion of their fleet by 2030 to meet the City’s carbon neutrality goals. To begin this process, the City of Durham tasked Tunmise Raji with developing the business case for electric light-duty vehicles. In addition, he also worked on early-stage electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) infrastructure deployment planning which includes determining the quantity, type, and ideal locations for chargers in the city.

Solutions

Raji approached this problem using a three-part process:

  • Understanding the transportation needs of the city. Data such as annual vehicle miles traveled, maintenance and repair costs, and overnight parking addresses were used to determine the transportation needs of the city.

  • Estimating the total cost of ownership of each vehicle type with the use patterns developed in the previous step. Here, industry standard total cost of ownership tools was used to calculate the lifetime ownership cost of conventional light-duty vehicles and their electric alternatives. In addition, Raji estimated the number of charging stations required to meet the transportation needs of the city and their ideal location.

  • Assigning a dollar figure to the benefits that fleet electrification can provide to the city.

Potential Impact

The result of the analysis revealed that sedans and light-duty pickup trucks are ready to be electrified as suitable and affordable electric alternatives currently exist in the market. Electrifying all sedans and light duty pickup trucks that will reach their end of life in the next 5 years has the potential to save approximately 5,000 tons of MTCO2e and $7 million.

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