Calgary Utility to Test 100 Electric Vehicles, Including i-MiEVs, by Year End

Calgary Utility to Test 100 Electric Vehicles, Including i-MiEVs, by Year End

Calgary's city-owned utility later this year will start letting its employees use about 100 battery-electric vehicles, including Mitsubishi's i-MiEV, as part of a pilot program designed to test BEV fleet usage.

Enmax Corp., which has more than 600,000 customers in Alberta, this week said more than 400 of its employees have expressed interest in driving the BEVs, which will be used by both the utility and the city. The program, which will also include Toronto Electric's A2B EV prototype, will run for as long as four years.

Calgary, which has about 1.1 million residents, is Canada's fifth largest metropolitan area.

The program marks the country's continued effort to boost both the supply of and demand for alternative-powertrain vehicles. Earlier this week, Toronto-based Electrovaya was awarded a $5-million grant from a Canadian government-funded foundation as the Toronto-based lithium-ion battery maker looks to develop better energy-storage systems for plug-in hybrid-electric trucks.

And in May, the government named hybrid-electric vehicle powertrain pioneer and Illinois Institute of Technology professor Ali Emadi as one of its new research chairs and has tapped him to oversee the country's hybrid-vehicle development efforts at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

Additionally, the Enmax plan gives Mitsubishi greater exposure for the i-MiEV, which the Japanese automaker started selling to the Japanese public late last year and plans to debut in both North America and the U.K. next year.

The company had planned to send 50 i-MiEVs to Quebec by year end as part of a three-year, $4.5 million study with Hydro-Quebec and the city of Boucherville, while Mitsubishi has sent five i-MiEVs to the national government's Transport Canada agency and Vancouver's city government this year.

Danny King, Contributor

Scott Doggett:  is an AutoObserver.com Associate Editor.