Adopting a “business to planet” mindset: a real-life example

To find out, I decided to take a look at New York City’s Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS). I spoke with Keith Kerman, Deputy Commissioner of DCAS, who kindly shared insights into the running of this massive enterprise – the US’s largest municipal fleet and widely regarded as one of the most sustainable fleets in the country.

New York City’s Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) is an agency with a mission to make City government work for all New Yorkers. 

DCAS’s ongoing climate change initiatives

Operating such a large, diverse, and complex fleet requires maximization of efficiency in everything the organization does. With fuel and maintenance costs representing a significant portion of its budget, moving toward more sustainable choices of fuel and vehicles not only helped it reduce tailpipe and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but also led to a more efficiently operated fleet.

The NYC fleet’s sustainability efforts began in the mid-1990s with compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles and then gradually transitioned to hybrids, plug-ins, biodiesels, and full EVs leveraging the mature technologies of the times. The one-size-fits-all approach would not work for DCAS given the complexity of operations, dynamic duty cycles, seasonal use cases (garbage trucks doubling up as snowplows), and emergency service responses in times of natural disasters. Today, DCAS operates 120 on-road and 70 off-road vehicle types.

NYC’s Clean Fleet Plan is a pragmatic, no-excuse, action-oriented strategy that’s aligned with the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), including the use of EVs, biofuels, and efficiencies (fuel-efficient vehicles, fleet optimization, fleet sharing, etc.). The results speak for themselves – DCAS is on track to hit its targets of 50% GHG reduction for the City fleet by 2025 and 80% by 2035.

Current technical challenges for municipal fleets

While DCAS is making great progress on its objectives, including sustainability, it faces ongoing challenges. Some of these challenges are unique to municipal fleets, while others may be familiar to, say, a last-mile delivery fleet operator.

Among the unique challenges is the need to reconcile new legislative mandates and technological realities. For example, NYC Local Law 140 calls for emergency and specialized trucks to be electric by 2038. The law does have exemptions, including where market availability does not exist. NYC currently plows snow with more than 3,000 trucks. There is no electric plow truck in the market, and when there is, the charging and backup power requirements will make this transition even more challenging.

Other unique challenges arise from factors such as the diversity of use cases, interdepartmental policies, vehicle allocation, high utilization rate (much of the fleet is used 24/7, e.g. ambulances, police vehicles, garbage trucks), multi-use, average age of the fleet, and high maintenance requirements due to operating in extreme conditions (responding to natural disasters). Yet more challenges relate to efforts to minimize accidents and mitigate related litigation costs (with average annual claims expenses totaling $175m).

Some operational challenges have a direct impact on sustainability strategy. For example, City ambulances today have a plug-in capacity on an alternative power unit (APU) battery. It is, however, very difficult operationally to find time to plug in without interrupting emergency services. Plug-in hybrids and regular hybrids can be more effective for emergency and policing operations than full EVs at present. New technologies in the future – for example, wireless charging or better batteries – could change this.

On the system’s front, the integration of discrete systems and the quality of data inputs are major pain points for a municipal fleet that deals with multiple departments and different data sets. DCAS operates many systems tied to different fleet-related services (asset tracking, contract and in-house repairs, fuel, parts, charging, auction, and telematics). At present, these systems are not integrated. OEMs and technology vendors could help, but they sometimes push for optimization around their own offerings instead of around the ecosystem that the fleet operator works in.

How technology providers can better support municipal fleets

Which emerging technologies are of most interest to a fleet operator? Promising use cases for advances in AI like ML/Gen AI ­– especially for a fleet operator like this with a vast and diverse ecosystem of vendors and partners – include automation of daily tasks, predictive maintenance and management, assisted data entry for improved data quality, cloud-agnostic systems, and performance management dashboards. Could AI help to more quickly identify under-used or improperly used vehicles, for example?

As well as helping fleet operators with specific innovations, technology providers can do a lot to enhance the ecosystem that enables DCAS services: for example, in areas like battery-swapping technologies, auxiliary power units for constantly used assets, accessories enabling multi-use of assets, and capabilities that support emergency services at short notice. New technology is, of course, already helping NYC to make its fleet cleaner, safer, and more efficient. DCAS is implementing renewable diesel, battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs), solar carports, telematics, intelligent speed assistance, high-vision trucks, and surround cameras for trucks, to name a few examples.

More needs to be done to actively enhance driver and pedestrian safety systems in terms of 360-degree monitoring and alerts. This could include closed-loop driver behavior monitoring to promote safe driving while addressing concerns surrounding data privacy, cybersecurity, and compliance.

Summing up

The New York City Clean Fleet Plan shows what’s possible when a city commits to sustainability at scale and takes a long, pragmatic view. By integrating mature technology with a comprehensive strategy for emissions reduction, the NYC Plan provides a model for how municipal fleets can be managed in a way that benefits both the city and the planet.

DCAS’s success in implementing the plan deserves our respect – plus all the support that technology providers can offer.

Please reach out to me to continue the conversation. I will also be at the New York Climate Week on 25 September at Capgemini’s Business to Planet Connect event.