Pierce Manufacturing Inc. has been running its Volterra™ electric pumper with the Madison (WI) Fire Department successfully for almost a year and will be delivering an electric pumper to the Portland (OR) Fire Department this Spring.
Likewise, Rosenbauer has delivered its Concept Fire Truck, the RT electric pumper, to the Los Angeles City (CA) Fire Department, and E-ONE is in production with its Vector™ electric fire truck for the Mesa (AZ) Fire Department. Oshkosh Airport Products also has a Volterra electric version of its Striker ARFF (aircraft rescue and firefighting) truck. Manufacturers see these vehicles and others as the opening round of extending electric propulsion technology to fire department fleets.
Pierce Manufacturing Inc.
The Pierce Volterra pumper built for Madison is located at the department’s Station 8, says Madison Chief Steven Davis. “Station 8 is our busiest station, with a mix of interstate highways, commercial and industrial buildings, and plenty of residential structures. Our crews have responded to a number of fires with the Volterra, have done a lot of training on it, and have worked it as a normal fire engine,” he says. The rig currently averages 12 calls a day, including structure fires, car fires, dumpster fires, alarm drops, and emergency medical services calls, he adds.
The Madison Volterra is on a Pierce Enforcer™ custom chassis and cab with seating for six firefighters, powered by a 155-kW hour battery pack housed in an 18-inch-wide compartment at the rear of the crew cab. The pumper has a Cummins ISB 6.7-liter 350-horsepower (hp) diesel engine to power its 1,500-gallon-per-minute (gpm) pump and to serve as a backup if the battery pack becomes depleted.
The rig has a 500-gallon water tank, a Command Zone™ display on the pump panel and on the dash, 150 cubic feet of compartmentation, plus ladder storage space and carries 500 feet of 5-inch large-diameter hose (LDH), two 300-foot 2½-inch crosslays, and one 300-foot 1¾-inch crosslay.
Madison’s Volterra uses an Oshkosh-patented, parallel-electric drivetrain featuring an electro-mechanical infinitely variable transmission, allowing zero emissions operation when powered by the integrated onboard batteries, says Eric Linsmeier, Pierce’s director of software and electrical technologies.
Davis points out that Madison had Pierce configure the pumper’s operation “to run the pump off the diesel engine to simplify operation for our firefighters so they don’t have to worry about draining the battery. When the operator puts the vehicle in pump gear, the diesel automatically powers up. It also will automatically power up if the battery becomes depleted, with the switch over happening seamlessly,”
he says.
The Volterra is charged at Station 8 using a fast-charging station, Davis notes, with the vehicle’s range designed to cover 24 hours of use. “We designed the electric pumper for Station 8’s territory, figuring two miles out and two miles back,” Davis says. “For 24 hours of use, we get about 37 miles before having to recharge. On a typical call, the battery drops to 85 percent, which recharges in 15 minutes to 100 percent on the rapid charger.”
Sara Boone, Portland (OR) Fire and Rescue chief, thinks electric pumpers are a natural progression in the fire service. “Portland has set long-term goals regarding its climate action plan and is looking to be net zero by 2050 and half of net zero by 2030, so electrifying the city’s fleet is a big component of those goals,” Boone says. “One hundred percent of our fleet is Pierce, so when they came to us with the electric concept fire engine they were developing, we wanted to be at the forefront of it.”
Bill Goforth, Portland’s deputy chief of logistics, says Portland has a specific body type it uses on its engines. “Pierce said they could incorporate our body style into the Volterra electric engine for us and that the battery packs would fit into it without changing the configuration,” Goforth notes. “We standardized our compartmentation layouts on our engines, and with the Volterra, equipment will be in the same places as our other engines.”
The Volterra Pierce is building for Portland is on an Enforcer custom chassis with seating for six firefighters, with a TAK-4 Independent Front Suspension with a 155-kilowatt (kW) battery pack. The rig will have a Cummins ISB 6.7-liter 350-hp diesel engine to power a 1,500-gpm, single-stage pump; a 500-gallon water tank; 150 cubic feet of compartmentation plus ladder storage; and a hosebed capacity to hold 1,000 feet of 5-inch LDH and 850 feet of 2½-inch hose.
1 Pierce Manufacturing Inc. built a Volterra™ electric pumper for the Madison (WI) Fire Department. (Photo 1 courtesy of Pierce Manufacturing Inc.)
2 Madison’s Volterra electric pumper, Engine 8, operates at the scene of a structure fire supplying an aerial master stream. (Photo 2 courtesy of Madison Fire Department.)
Oshkosh Airport Products LLC
Jack Bermingham, business unit director of airport products for Oshkosh Airport Products LLC, says Oshkosh has developed the Striker® Volterra performance hybrid ARFF truck that will be available on the Striker 4×4 and 6×6 chassis platforms. Bermingham points out the Striker Volterra 6×6 vehicle configuration has a modular cab design with a center steer driving position, seating capacity for five persons, an Oshkosh patented parallel-electric drivetrain with an electro-mechanical infinitely variable transmission, a Scania DC13 diesel engine, and an Oshkosh power divider with TAK-4® all-wheel independent suspension.
The Striker Volterra 6×6 carries a 50-foot Snozzle® high reach extendable turret (HRET) with an Oshkosh K-Factor™ piercing tip alignment system, 2,000-gpm pump, 3,170-gallon water tank, 444-gallon foam tank, 550-pound dry chemical powder system, and 420 pounds of Halotron or clean agent. The Striker Volterra 4×4 ARFF truck has the same drivetrain as the 6×6 and a 1,585-gpm water pump, a 220-gallon foam tank, options for a 50-foot Snozzle, 550 pounds of dry chemical, and 420 pounds of Halotron or clean agent, Bermingham adds.
3 Oshkosh Airport Products LLC has developed the Striker® Volterra performance hybrid ARFF truck, shown here on its 6×6 chassis with a 50-foot Snozzle® HRET. (Photo 3 courtesy of Oshkosh Airport Products LLC.)
Rosenbauer
Rosenbauer has delivered an RT electric fire truck to the City of Los Angeles (CA) Fire Department based on its Concept Fire Truck (CFT) but modified it to meet LA City’s needs in terms of hosebed, ground ladders, and preconnects. The RT electric fire truck has two batteries of 66 kW each, with a charge capacity of 132 kW, enabling fully electric operation for roughly two hours and covering around 90 percent of all applications, according to Todd McBride, Rosenbauer’s RT sales and marketing manager.
4 Rosenbauer delivered a RT electric fire truck to the Los Angeles City (CA) Fire Department capable of fully electric operation for approximately two hours before needing a recharge (mirrors were later removed). (Photos 4-5 courtesy of Rosenbauer.)
5 The interior of the cab on the RT electric pumper for Los Angeles City. Note the video screens on the A posts instead of exterior mirrors.
Los Angeles City Chief Ralph Terrazas says, “The electric fire engine is an innovative tool that will help reduce noise, harmful diesel emissions, and provide a flexible tool for firefighting and rescue operations from a technologically advanced platform. We are looking forward to evaluating it in a real-world environment once it hits the streets of Hollywood.”
Los Angeles City has a sworn workforce of around 3,500 and operates a fleet of almost of 1,300 vehicles that responded to approximately 500,000 emergency calls last year, including 4,100 structure fires.
Wade White, assistant chief at Los Angeles City, notes that the LA City RT pumper has seating for five firefighters in a clean cab, with self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) stored in outside compartments. White adds that Los Angeles designed the rig with hose reels and discharges in the left and right rear compartments, with the left side having three 2½-inch discharges and the right side having two 2½- and one 4-inch discharge. The rig also has hosebeds for two crosslay dead lays in a transverse compartment.
McBride points out that the RT electric fire truck has a Rosenbauer NH 1,500-gpm pump, a 550-gallon water tank, a 26-gallon foam tank, and a Rosenbauer Aquamatic foam proportioning system that allows the operator to identify the percent of foam for each discharge or to flow only water. “LA’s RT has all-wheel-drive capability and an adjustable suspension with four different drive heights,” McBride says. “These are drive mode, scene mode, off-road mode, and flood mode. The RT can drop down at a scene to seven inches off the ground and with its weatherproof drivetrain can drive through three feet of water.”
The RT has two gated 6-inch rear intakes and two 2½-inch gated rear intakes as well as an all-digital pump panel in the L3 compartment, McBride says, although the pump can also be run from inside the cab. “It also has a backup generator, which we call the Range Extender,” he notes. “If the batteries get down to a 20 percent charge, the diesel generator starts another electric motor, which is used to recharge the batteries. The Range Extender always produces more energy than the truck consumes, so that extra energy goes to topping off the batteries.”
Terrazas notes that he was impressed with the RT when he test-drove it at Dodger Stadium. “It has rapid acceleration and a tight turning radius,” Terrazas says. “Also, there are no mirrors but rather video screens on each side of the console.” He adds that the electric pumper will be housed at Station 82, where there are a lot of narrow roads in the Hollywood Hills and always the threat of brush fires. “That’s the station for this pumper because of its four-wheel-drive and pump-and-roll capabilities,” he says.
Tyler Moore, deputy chief of Vancouver (BC) Fire Rescue Services, says Vancouver sent a team to the Rosenbauer factory in Linz, Austria, to see LA City’s unit being built and to drive a demo truck, which eventually led the department to purchase an RT. “Vancouver’s RT is not much different than the LA City unit,” Moore says. “Where they do dead lays in the transverse compartment, we have preconnects of two 200-foot 1¾-inch hoselines and one 200-foot 2½-inch hoseline. Our hosebed will carry a minimum of 800 feet of 5-inch LDH, and we could get 1,000 feet on it as well as 1,000 feet of nonconnected 2½-inch hose.”
Moore says the department plans on running the RT as first out in No. 6 Fire Hall on the west end of downtown Vancouver. “That Fire Hall covers Stanley Park, which is covered by a wildland 4×4 unit, but because of the RT’s 4×4 and pump-and-roll capabilities, it will respond from there as well. We’ve found that the RT turns tighter than our Ford F-350 wildland unit because of its four-wheel steering.”
REV Fire Group/E-ONE
E-ONE® is building its first all-electric fire truck, the Vector™, for the Mesa (AZ) Fire and Medical Department, according to Roger Lackore, senior director of product development for REV Fire Group. He says that the customizable Vector has the industry’s longest electric pumping duration using 316 kW of total battery power, which enables the truck to pump at 750 gpm through four hoselines for four hours on a single charge.
6 This artist’s rendering shows the Vector™ electric fire truck that E-ONE is building for the Mesa (AZ) Fire and Medical Department. (Photo 6 courtesy of E-ONE.)
Lackore notes that the Mesa pumper has a range extender comprised of a Cummins diesel engine coupled to a generator with enough power to keep up with a 1,250-gpm pumping scenario from draft or 1,500 gpm from hydrant pressure. The Vector has a low battery placement for a safer, lower center of gravity and a 400-kW (536-hp) electric drive motor with regenerative braking.
Customized features on the Mesa engine include a 100-inch-wide cab with raised roof and a clean cab design with no SCBA in the cab, an extruded aluminum body with full-height/full-depth compartments on each side, electronic stability control, a severe duty front bumper with a full-width tray, a thermal battery management system, 500 amps of 12-volt power, a heavy-duty two-arm overhead ladder rack with 16-foot roof and 28-foot extension ladders, a low hosebed design holding a total of 1,750 feet of hose, a 2002 FoamPro foam system, and AXIS™ Smart truck technology.
Zeus Electric Chassis
Last year, Zeus Electric Chassis produced a demo electric fire truck combining its reconfigurable Zeus Power Platform™ with a 300-gallon water tank and IDEX electric motor-driven water pump. All auxiliary functions, including the water pump, are powered from the main vehicle batteries, says Bob Grinstead, Zeus’s founder and chief technology officer.
7 Zeus Electric Chassis built this demo electric fire truck with its Zeus Power Platform™ drive, a 300-gallon water tank, and an IDEX Fire & Safety electric motor-driven pump. (Photo 7 courtesy of Zeus Electric Chassis.)
The Zeus truck is equipped with several products from IDEX Fire & Safety, including Hale Products’ proprietary electronic water flow system. Zeus is focusing on building Class 5 and Class 6 (19,500 pounds and 22,300 pounds) gross vehicle weight rating vehicles.
ALAN M. PETRILLO is a Tucson, Arizona-based journalist, the author of three novels and five nonfiction books, and a member of the Fire Apparatus & Emergency Equipment Editorial Advisory Board. He served 22 years with the Verdoy (NY) Fire Department, including in the position of chief.
