Delta goes electric with International eMV

Zero-emission airplanes are in development, but don’t expect them to replace passenger jets soon. So Delta started its fleet electrification journey with a truck, as explained during NTEA’s Green Truck Summit, held during Work Truck Week.

So next time you’re flying out of Boston Logan International Airport, your in-flight meal might be delivered to the aircraft galley by an International eMV. Working with International Motors and airport ground support upfitter Mallaghan, Delta’s EV catering truck started operating in January.

Airport ground operations are prime for early electrification successes, thanks to the need for low-speed movements and constant stopping and “idling”—something that is harsh on diesel engines and nonexistent in EVs.

Helen Farr, Delta’s ground service equipment fleet strategy manager, said the airline has focused on ground support sustainability for several years. However, its focus has been on equipment smaller than the medium-duty eMV, which can be spec’d as a Class 6 or 7 truck.

Challenge of airport electrification

Those smaller, low-voltage fleet vehicle groups include baggage tractors, belt loaders, and push-back tractors. “The primary reason we’ve been focused on those fleets instead of others is they were commercially available and operationally feasible,” Farr said during a Green Truck Summit panel. “For the longest time, we’ve been looking for chassis manufacturers and OEMs who could bring us that midsized, large-sized truck that could sustain our operations,” she said. “We’re running typically three shifts at any large station, so being able to support and operate for that duration has been a somewhat difficult challenge.”

International and Mallaghan were up for the challenge.

“It sounded very promising up front from the duty cycle perspective—low speed, low miles,” Curt Studebaker, International product strategy director, said. “But we knew it was going to be a challenge. There was no clear solution at the outset.”

Through two years of technical meetings with Mallaghan and Delta to develop route data, range analysis, charging and dispatch strategies, they were able to seize the opportunity.

While electrifying the vast trucking industry is challenging because of range anxiety, some segments make much more sense for the technology.

“If you’re driving 100-plus miles a day, carrying a lot of weight at very high speeds, every one of those attributes work against electrification,” noted Mallaghan CCO Joe Griffith. “But in our space, in our application and technology in aviation, it’s low speed. It’s short drive cycles. It’s a lot of sitting and waiting on airplanes to come in. So it really is a very good application of EV technology as it sits today.”

But that doesn’t mean it was an easy path to building North America’s first electric airline catering truck. “I think we have to take a step back and appreciate this was an engineering project,” Griffith said. “This took the engineering capabilities of International, Mallaghan, and Delta working together.”

Along with mapping out routing and energy capacity, the engineers had to provide refrigeration on the truck, which Griffith said was an added challenge.

Getting ground crew buy-in

Delta’s Farr said the partnerships and engineering with International and Mallaghan were critical in its early fleet electrification success. But she also had to work with her ground fleet crew to get them invested in the journey.

“Anytime you bring anything new into operation, the operation is going to look at it a little sideways,” she said. “They’re going to say, ‘What’s this and why do I have this?’ You really have to manage the expectations and preliminarily prepare them for what’s coming their way. Otherwise, the change is going to be difficult.”

The OEM and upfitter helped Delta train its ground support staff on the eMV, including making the truck’s controls similar to the diesel-powered trucks they were used to and alleviating any range fears.

“You definitely want to make sure that anytime you’re introducing new equipment into your operation that you have a partner that’s going to stand by you from the beginning concept all the way to deployment and throughout servicing,” Farr added.