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Last fall Morehead State University purchased five electric vehicles to benefit its efforts for "Going Green."
Mike Walters, MSU vice president of Administration and Fiscal Services, said the idea for the electric vehicles surfaced about a year ago, when some MSU facility staff attended a conference at the University of Texas and saw a number of the vehicles being used on campus. Walters said the electric vehicles are a part of MSU's green effort on campus.
"We want to try to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels and have been looking at ways to do that over the last several months," Walters said.
Maintenance Supervisor Ed Beam said the electric vehicles on campus are called GEMs and are made by the Chrysler Company. Each vehicle runs off of 8-volt batteries and can operate 10 to 12 hours on one full charge. The vehicles have a top speed of 25 miles per hour.
The GEMs are smaller than a normal size maintenance truck. The front cab of a GEM is rounded in shape, and has a small truck bed attached in the back with tool boxes on each side. Compared to a regular truck, the size is sometimes a hindrance, but they're very efficient because fuel doesn't have to be bought every day, Beam said. The vehicles are used in Morehead State's landscaping and grounds operations, and building maintenance operations.
"We use them to get across campus and back and forth from building to building for maintenance calls," Ed Beam said.
The vehicles are stored in the Rice Maintenance Building, where they are charged every night. Beam believes the electric vehicles are good for the University in today's economy.
"With the way the economy is, they're very efficient for the university," Beam said.
Each GEM has all the basic equipment and operations of a regular size maintenance truck: tool boxes, headlights, turn signals, seatbelts, and license plate.
"They are fully licensed vehicles and they're legal to operate on any street that has a 45 mph or less speed limit," Walters said.
Walters said, along with the electric vehicle project, the university also is looking ways way to cut back on the use of gasoline.
"We also had a project underway at that time where we were looking at our gasoline power vehicle fleet and had a goal of reducing that," Walters said. "We've been able to reduce the gasoline power vehicle fleet by about 15 percent since last fall."
The electric vehicles cost about $13,000 each, and are somewhat cheaper than a light duty pickup truck, Walters said.
Walters said the five electric vehicles are in a test fleet and have had a positive response so far.
"We think eventually that we can replace most all of the smaller service vehicles with these electric vehicles," he said.
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