Much of the world is preparing to switch to electric vehicles.
General Motors, which makes the popular Chevy Silverado pickup, has pledged to end production of gasoline and diesel-fueled cars, trucks and SUVs by 2035.
But MU, which operates a fleet of nearly 1,000 vehicles, still owns mostly fossil fuel-powered automobiles. University officials acknowledge that they don’t have a comprehensive, long-term plan for converting their fleet to electric or other alternative fuel vehicles.
“I don’t know what the departments will want to do, if they will want to buy an electric vehicle or if they want to stay with the traditional type of vehicles,” UM Procurement Associate Director Teresa Vest said.
The university has 962 vehicles in its fleet. A total of 938 vehicles run on fossil fuel, which accounts for 97% of the entire fleet. Only two vehicles are electric, a 2015 Nissan Leaf S and a 2005 GEM sedan. Eighteen others are hybrid, and four are powered by ethanol.
Most vehicles in the rest of the MU vehicle fleet run on gasoline. In fact, for every single diesel vehicle, there are nearly eight gasoline-powered automobiles.
Currently, the university buys vehicles based on requests from individual departments. If the vehicle request is larger than $10,000, UM Procurement will start a competitive bid process.
After setting up the specifics of the request with the department in question, the procurement office is responsible for reaching out to local car dealerships to solicit bids.
“If (bids from dealerships) meet the minimum specifications that we ask for, then we go with the one with the lowest price,” Vest said.
The university does not have any arrangement with car dealerships or manufacturers to procure vehicles. Vest added that the procurement office encourages departments to consider the total acquisition cost, including maintenance cost, when requesting a new vehicle.
MU spokesperson Uriah Orland said the university is unlikely to change its procurement policy.
“I don’t think the university is going to change the model of how we procure things just to say, ‘We’re going to buy 100 electric vehicles or something,’” he said.
Since vehicle purchases come out of each department’s budget, he said it is up to the departments to choose whether to get an alternative fuel vehicle or not.
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Major carmakers’ plans
Ford, Chevrolet and Dodge make up 87% of the MU fleet. The manufacturers producing these three makes have all announced plans for making more electric vehicles in the near future.
Ford, the most popular make in the MU fleet, plans to go carbon neutral in 2050 and deliver 2 million electric vehicles annually by 2026, which would be around one-third of Ford’s global volume, according to a news release published in April.
General Motors, the company behind Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac and GMC, is ambitious in transitioning to electric, as well.
CEO Mary Barra posted on LinkedIn in 2021 that the company plans to become carbon neutral by 2040, eliminating emissions of all vehicles as technologically possible.
Chevrolet specifically is set to launch three different electric models, namely Equinox and Blazer SUVs and Silverado trucks in the summer and fall of 2023, according to its website.
Dodge’s parent company Stellantis plans to stop manufacturing gas-powered Challenger and Charger models after model year 2023, according to a news release published in August.
Dodge also announced its first hybrid SUV crossover model in August, according to Bloomberg. The new hybrid vehicle is set to be available by the last quarter of this year, according to the Dodge website.
Nationally, President Joe Biden announced new Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards in April, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Transportation. The new standards require carmakers to increase their fleets’ fuel efficiency by 8% annually for model years 2024 and 2025 and 10% for 2026.
Missouri has a law requiring state agencies with a fleet of more than 15 vehicles to hit certain targets for buying alternative fuel vehicles, according to Section 414.410 of the state code. MU is exempt from that law.
The law has required most state agencies to buy alternative fuel vehicles for at least 50% of the vehicles they have acquired in every two-year period since 1998, unless certain exceptions are met.
Orland said MU is excluded from the law because the university is not considered a “public agency” in this case.
MU v. other public universities
Nationwide, some universities are moving quickly to build electric fleets, while others are sticking with traditional automobiles.
For example, the University of Idaho has no electric vehicles and only two public charging spaces on campus. But New York’s University at Buffalo, which has a fleet of 500 vehicles, mandates that all new purchases for the fleet will be electric if possible starting in 2025, according to its website.
Other public universities in the Midwest show a range of commitment, according to school websites and records from the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System. The rating system is operated by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, which routinely collects data on sustainability policies from universities across the country.
For example, the University of Illinois has 95 hybrid and electric vehicles in its fleet of over 1,000 vehicles, and itnalso operates more than a dozen charging spaces on campus. As part of the Illinois Climate Action Plan, the university carried out a project in 2017 that identified fleet vehicles to be replaced with electric vehicles.
The neighboring University of Nebraska provides six charging stations on campus and plans to replace two fleet vehicles with electric vehicles within the year, according to the university website.
Michigan State University is partnering with utilities company Consumers Energy to acquire 369 electric vehicles by 2030. By 2050, the university aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% from its 2010 baseline, according to a news release published in September.
What’s ahead on campus
Carlos Sun, an MU engineering professor, said installing enough charging stations on campus and around Columbia would be the “simple answer” to transitioning to a future with more alternative fuel vehicles.
While there are no publicly accessible charging stations on campus, 65 are located across Columbia, according to PlugShare, a database for charging stations. Some of them can be found at various car dealerships, the Hy-Vee grocery store on West Broadway and the Tiger Hotel.
Transitioning to an electric or alternative fuel fleet entails a “chicken-and-egg problem,” in Sun’s opinion. There need to be enough charging stations around for people to consider buying electric vehicles, but nobody will want to build charging stations without first seeing sufficient demand.
“Somebody’s got to start developing the infrastructure. Otherwise, people will never purchase (electric vehicles),” Sun said. Based on this dilemma, he predicted people would opt for hybrid vehicles instead.
Charging stations aren’t the only issue. Maintaining alternative fuel vehicles requires mechanics with appropriate technological training, Sun said.
“You have to do electronics in your training,” Sun said. “You are also adding to your expertise (the) needs for learning how to handle microcomputers throughout your car system.”
Technological maturity may also be a concern for transitioning to an electric vehicle fleet. Sun pointed to battery technology as a big component for electric vehicles.
He said researchers are looking into making electric vehicle batteries lighter with greater energy storage capabilities so cars will last for longer recharging cycles.
“If the technology is still not affordable enough or efficient enough, perhaps there’s a time where maybe down the road, (the transition) would make a lot more sense,” he said.
It is difficult for universities and public agencies to predict what transportation trends will take hold, he said. Because manufacturers produce cars based on customer demand, it would be “just tough” for universities to make wholesale changes to their infrastructure without knowing exactly what would be in the market.
Since public universities like MU have a limited budget, Sun said they must “be careful how (they) deploy infrastructure and then (they’re) trying to anticipate what future’s going to look like, but the future might not realize exactly the way that many people are predicting.”