Plug-In Hybrid Electric Pickup Trucks

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper had nothing but praise for Tri-State Generation and Transmission Friday, November 19 when the electric co-op power supplier announced that it is adding six quiet but powerful pickup trucks to its fleet of trucks as part of a nationwide test of new plug-in hybrid electric trucks. These Ram 1500 PHEVs were built by Chrysler. Tri-State will be testing them for the next three years in cooperation with Chrysler and the Department of Energy.

After driving the PHEV to the Capitol, Gov. Hickenlooper had good things to say about the truck. He also had good things to say about Tri-State as a company, calling it one of the state’s “most innovative companies.”

Chrysler has been rolling out a test fleet of 140 Ram PHEVs. Tri-State is the only electric cooperative involved in the testing of these vehicles and the only organization in the Rocky Mountain region taking part in the program. That’s a source of pride for Ken Anderson, the G&T’s executive vice president and general manager.

“We are excited to get these trucks into our vehicle fleet to see how the technology performs in the variety of conditions throughout our 200,000 square-mile service territory,” Anderson said.
That huge expanse — Tri-State serves 44 distribution co-ops in Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming—appealed to Chrysler.

“They are being assigned to Tri-State personnel in fleet, safety and member services, primarily,” Jim Van Someren, Tri-State’s communications manager, said. The co-op anticipates putting a minimum of 1,000 miles a month on the vehicles.

“With Tri-State’s vast geographic footprint and the variety of weather conditions throughout the year, we’ll be sure to collect a significant amount of valuable data,” said Abdullah Bazzi, senior manager of Chrysler’s advanced hybrid vehicle project.

Chrysler began distributing the trucks May 25, when the city of Yuma, Arizona, received the first 10. The automaker said only testing the pickups right now and has no plans for a production version.

During the Friday news conference, Hickenlooper said that the PHEV technology “can change the world.”

It was already doing that at the news conference, where one of the pickups powered the public-address system. That was a small-scale demonstration of one of the trucks’ other uses—providing power back to the grid in a “reverse power flow” of up to 6.6 kilowatts.

Each truck has a 12.9 kilowatt-hour battery pack located under the second row seat.

When fully charged, these test trucks can go 30-60 miles on electric power, depending on conditions, before the gasoline engine kicks in.