Southern California Edison (SCE), the primary electricity supply company for much of southern California, recently began a three-month testing trial of the battery-electric Freightliner eCascadia from the Freightliner Customer Experience (CX) Fleet.
SCE is the first utility to test an electric truck from Freightliner and will use the eCascadia for material transport, moving heavy equipment like transformers, wire reels and switch gears from an Irwindale, California warehouse to SCE service centers and storage yards. SCE’s parent company, Edison International, has a goal of electrifying 30% of its medium-duty vehicles and pickup trucks and 8% of its heavy-duty trucks by 2030.
Freightliner’s CX Fleet is partially supported by a partnership between Daimler Trucks North America and the South Coast Air Quality Management District (South Coast AQMD) which focuses on improving air quality in large portions of Los Angeles, Orange County, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, including the Coachella Valley.
“Projects like Freightliner’s CX Fleet are helping to demonstrate the viability of all-electric heavy-duty trucks and showing companies that zero-emission options will soon be here to meet their truck replacement needs,” said Wayne Nastri, South Coast AQMD’s executive officer. “These demonstrator fleets are a critical step for transitioning trucks to cleaner technologies and helping us to achieve our clean air goals for the South Coast Basin.”
Learn more about the Freightliner Customer Experience from FE‘s recent podcast interview here.
