At the February webinar, we were joined by guest speakers representing King County Metro, Everett Transit and Recology to highlight strategies to transition their fleets to electric as well as ongoing pilots to electrify heavy-duty commercial service vehicles.

Our speakers were Tony Cademarti, Fleet Program Manager at Everett Transit, Doug Fenty, Fleet Manager at Recology and Danny Ilioiu, Zero-Emissions Fleet Strategic Planning Manager at King County Metro.

A big thank you to our event partner Western Washington Clean Cities for supporting this event. You can catch the continuation of heavy-duty transportation electrification at the WWCC webinar on March 4th.

Recology is a 100-year-old garbage and recycling company, with a zero-waste philosophy.

• 2008, Recology began the transition to cleaner fuel alternatives with biodiesel.
• 2009, Recology implemented 40 Compressed National Gas fleet in the region 40 CNG and 30 Diesel trucks, with the installation of infrastructure to support the rollout.
• 2017, Recology secured a deal to use biogas from the Renton Waste Treatment Facility to power the 125 CNG trucks.

• 2017, Recology began the transition of fleet support vehicles to Electric Bolts and installed chargers to help fuel the new vehicles.
• 2019, Through a partnership with the City of Seattle – Recology deployed two fully electric class 8 garbage trucks- delivered by BYD, 2 fully-electric class 6 delivery trucks, and 3 EV bolts, 4 hybrid electric pick-up trucks.

• The Future goal for Recology is to achieve a 90% renewable fleet by 2022.

You can view Doug's presentation here: 

Tony Cademarti of Everett Transit presented the best practices and lessons learned from the transition to an electric fleet. In 2018 Everett Transit received their first four electric buses from Proterra, followed by three more in 2019

Lessons learned 

• Start planning and training even before the work starts. The transition to an electrified fleet is a change of an entire ecosystem.
• Training the workforce is very important. Through the process of the transition to electric buses, Everett Transit worked with the drivers to make sure there was an understanding of what goes into the trucks.
• Work with the local utilities to lay the groundwork for infrastructure to charge the electric buses.
• The biggest lesson for transit agencies transitioning to an electric fleet is to build from other transit agency programs. The work can’t be done in a silo but through sharing best practices.

Everett Transit will continue to electrify its fleet with a transition to a fully electric fleet of 36 electric buses by 2030.

You can view Tony’s presentation here:

King County Metro has committed to moving to a 100% zero-emissions fleet powered by renewable energy no later than 2040, with a plan of 1000+ all-electric buses by 2040.

In 2019, KC Metro started the implementation of electric buses with a pilot testing electric buses from three auto manufacturers - New Flyer, Proterra, and BYD.

KC Metro released an implementation report and a feasibility study as a result of the pilot test of the leased

The pilot program allowed KC Metro the opportunity to experiment with different styles of charging infrastructure that would meet the needs and frequency of charging necessary. Another purpose of the pilot was to partnership opportunities with electric utilities like Seattle City Lights and Puget Sound Energy on rate structure and more.

In February of 2020, King County Metro ordered 80 all-electric buses for service in 2021

You can view Danny’s presentation here: