Retrofitting the service car fleet of the municipality

Summary

The Municipality of Perugia uses its car fleet to make daily trips across the city. Currently, the fleet is composed of about 150 vehicles using petrol. Therefore, Perugia is setting an example to its citizens by retrofitting the more polluting vehicles in the Municipality’s car fleet in order to reduce emissions and fuel consumption in the historic city centre.

Implementing sustainable mobility

Retrofitting a public car fleet is a new type of approach for Perugia and the strategy to introduce sustainable mobility in the city begins by setting an example with its own vehicle fleet. Furthermore, the remaining methane kits will be assigned to Perugia citizens, selecting a list of “winners” using a list of criteria, which take the income of the participants and their sustainable behaviour into account.

The main objectives are to:

• Reduce fuel consumption and main pollutant emissions (CO -90%, CO2 -14%, NOX -85%);
• Encourage the usage of methane retrofitted vehicles in the limited traffic zone (LTZ);
• The sustainable mobility system will help to inform citizens about the negative effects of private car use in Perugia;
• Any suitable cars in the city’s fleet will be retrofitted and the selection will be made using a collection of data on the types, plates, registration, the department they belong to, emissions, average fuel consumption, mileage and daily routes.

Progress

All of the eligible cars in the Municipality’s fleet have been retrofitted and homologated by the public Department of Motor Vehicles. These cars are now circulating within the city. The mobility brand ESC, which was developed in parallel, promotes the retrofitted cars. In addition to the cars, the police force agreed to retrofit half of their “retrofittable” car fleet. The procedures are now ongoing.

Outcomes

The city of Perugia expects that the results of the analysis will be used to propose a short/medium term policy regarding further retrofitting of the entire car fleet or possibly contributing to the retrofitting of the private cars in the city. Furthermore, other Italian municipalities, RENAISSANCE cities and other CIVITAS cities will be able to learn from the post-measure training and dissemination activities. It is expected that the model will be adopted by those interested in sustainable mobility.