Electric Truck-Bus Manufacturing in Disadvantaged Communities of New York State
Climate change is the main issue for us. Transportation and industrial activities contribute to more than 50% of greenhouse gas emissions. Tailpipe emissions should be curbed but even now, electric/fuel cell electric vehicles are expensive/rare. Our battery electric and fuel cell electric vehicles developments have been conducted with two considerations : develop vehicles in disadvantaged communities and source parts locally. We also assist in technology development, quality control and regulatory requirements. We have been doing these in Indonesia and China, developing battery electric passenger cars and fuel cell electric buses. Our electric vehicle- fuel cell electric vehicles (EV-FCEV) have been tested, crashed and put on trial-runs. Our NY Electric Truck & Bus Challenge objectives are to build development workshops/plants in disadvantaged communities that source parts locally. Local part sourcing could empower communities, reduce costs and operational challenges. Our measure of success is when these plants can support us and become EV/FCEV industrial bases to serve NY/other regions.
Basically, we propose the following strategies :
- Work with the local disadvantage communities on how they could help us building these trucks and buses
- The cooperation could be on the form of locals willing to work with us, local leaders who promote our causes and business owners/companies who could participate
- We could form cooperatives or companies with the locals to support our activities.
- Then we find workshops/facilities from our business partners for assembling our subsystems (battery packs, electric propulsion, buses, etc.)
- We will train and teach our local hires to assemble various systems of our vehicles that include also charging facilities.
- We will buy or get used truck or bus donations from surrounding NY operators that are willing to operate these clean vehicles
- We will deploy our vehicles, test them and run them on various routes
- We will get revenue sharing, local company profits of these cooperations
Success on this effort will be coming several tiers : local employment, increase skills for locals, increase small but hi-tech local companies, cleaner environment and poverty reductions.
The project will initiate many activities in NY state that are coming from skilled labors in electrification, more companies involved in the electrification and poverty reductions in the disadvantage communities being involved.