Along with 3 diesel garbage trucks, the Santa Cruz City Council has approved the purchase of a garbage truck that has an electric motor on this next cycle of purchasing garbage trucks. If the electric refuse collection vehicle works out well, the plan is to get more the next time the city needs new garbage trucks. Each truck is generally cycled out after 7 years. The money for these trucks generally comes from the city’s Refuse Enterprise Fund. In the case of the electric truck, however, the city received $400,000 in the form of a grant from the Monterey Bay Air Resource District for that truck….and they could be getting a $200,000 grant from the Volkswagen Environmental Mitigation Trust For California. The cost of the electric garbage truck is just a little under $600,000.
Although the city would ideally like to move to an all-electric fleet of refuse collection trucks, the batteries are used not just to move the truck around the community but also for the arms that lift the trash into the truck….and so the city needs to figure out what will work best long term.
