SoCal Utility Begins Testing Of Freightliner eCascadia

Southern California Edison (SCE), the primary electricity supply company for much of southern California, received a Freightliner eCascadia from the Freightliner Customer Experience (CX) Fleet to begin a three-month testing trial of the battery-electric Class 8 truck.

“SCE’s testing of the eCascadia is a major step down the path of achieving our company’s fleet electrification goals,” said SCE principal manager of Fleet Asset Management Todd Carlson, who manages the company’s fleet of more than 6200 vehicles.

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, recently published the 2030 goal to electrify 30% of their medium-duty vehicles and pickup trucks and eight percent of their heavy-duty trucks.

Freightliner’s CX Fleet is partially supported by a partnership between Daimler Trucks North America and the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) 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, SCAQMD’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.”