Volvo Trucks has announced that the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) has given the its Volvo FM Electric an extended test drive, which the company says is an effort to understand how low emissions vehicles can be integrated into emergency services fleets in the future.
The electric prime mover with an RFS water tanker in tow, tackled the 550 kilometre route from the services’ NSW logistics headquarters at Glendinning in Western
Sydney to the border city of Albury, where it was displayed at the NSW RFS Championships at Thurgoona, a northern suburb of Albury.
The driving team consisted of Inspector Brendan Doyle, along with the RFS logistics manager and the RFS logistics and transport supervisor, who all shared driving duties over the route to asses the performance and driveability of the vehicle as well as the heavy vehicle charging experience.
“This drive presented a great opportunity for us to touch, feel and experience an electric prime mover on public roads,” said Doyle.
“It also allows us to consider where a vehicle like this could fill roles within our logistics fleet in the future and over the course of the trip, the truck averaged 88.7 km/h with an energy consumption of 1.24kWh/km,” he added.
Volvo said that the required charging time was 120 minutes to complete the 6.2 hour trip with stops made at Goulburn and Tarcutta.
“The driving experience was sensational, and one of the key takeaways for me was that you could take anyone familiar with an existing Volvo truck and they’d be able to drive this without additional training at all,” ” added Peter Duff.
Volvo Group Australia’s vice president of governmental sales, Cameron Bettany said that there has been a lot of interest in battery electric trucks from fire and emergency services around the country.
“Fire and emergency services are on the front line when it comes the impact of climate change on our local environment,” Bettany said
“Many in these services are acutely aware of the need to reduce emissions, not only from a climate perspective, but also from a health and safety perspective for those first responders,” he said.
“Emergency services operate in a complex environment and with that a mix of technology types will be required to enable sustainable operational capability, and battery electric trucks are a key part of this mix,” he said.
“It’s fantastic to see RFS getting out there and investigating how these vehicles perform in a real-world setting,” Bettany concluded
Volvo Trucks Australia says that it offers an electric equivalent for its entire range of diesel-powered vehicles
