Nissan starting to use fully-electric transport trucks to deliver new vehicles to dealers

DOWNEY, Calif. (KABC) -- A Class 8 truck arrived at the end of its journey from the port to a Nissan dealership in Downey. Not an unusual sight, except this particular big rig is fully electric.

"It's a huge deal, and it's something that's really exciting to be a part of, to be a part of the change in transportation," said Jill Guenther of Nikola Vehicles.

Nikola Vehicles is the company that builds the electric trucks.

Emissions from port operations has been a concern for many years and is being dealt with little by little. This new collaboration between Nissan and Avant Garde Logistics is designed to solve one piece of the puzzle.

"You think about the time that these diesel trucks sit in traffic. The amount of emissions they're sitting and spilling out within the ports. This is something that automatically takes that to zero," said Chris Styles, vice president of logistics for Nissan North America.

Aboard this all-electric truck is an early delivery of Nissan's newest all-electric vehicle, the Ariya. The plan is to transport as many of these from the port to dealerships as possible with trucks that are fully battery powered, just like the cars they'll be carrying.

"As far as moving society toward electric vehicles, obviously as Nissan we have a global strategic initiative. Not just from a product standpoint. Between now and 2050 we will be emissions free," Styles said.

If you've driven on any of the freeways that lead away from the port, such as the 110, 710 and 405, there's no doubt you've seen a lot of trucks on the road and probably smelled their diesel exhaust. This new truck carrying Nissan vehicles doesn't burn fuel but instead runs on electricity, so you won't be smelling it at all and it's also very quiet.

Range, even fully loaded, is over 300 miles. Since these are the kind of trucks that operate primarily during daylight hours, they can be charged overnight in their off hours, when the electric grid is off-peak.

"Recharge time, depending on the speed of the charger, at 175 kilowatts, is three to three-and-a-half hours," Guenther said.

When many of us see a car transporter on the road, we like to catch a glimpse of what it's carrying - maybe a new model that's just arriving in showrooms.

Now make sure to catch a glimpse of the rig itself. It just might be the newest model in the trucking world.