JAC Motors New Zealand is supporting food rescue charity KiwiHarvest by gifting it an electric truck for use across Auckland over the next year.

The addition of the JAC truck will help KiwiHarvest expand its operations in combating food waste and supporting vulnerable communities while also reducing its carbon footprint.

KiwiHarvest chief executive Angela Calver says the JAC electric truck adds capacity for more than 2100 collections, resulting in the equivalent of over 400,000 extra meals distributed into communities each year.

“As a food rescue organisation, KiwiHarvest collects food that is unable to be sold for a variety of reasons and we redistribute this to charities who provide both food and wrap around support services.

“KiwiHarvest feeds 9500 people every week and we recently celebrated redistributing 14 million kilograms of food waste saved.

“Saving good food from landfill, while operating sustainably is central to our mission, so the use of a zero emissions truck not only enables us to rescue more it also helps us reduce our carbon footprint,” Calver says.

In its first month of supporting KiwiHarvest, the electric truck has exceeded expectations. The chilled vehicle completed its full daily run of collections and drop offs across Auckland, arriving back to base having used only 20-25% of the battery across its average distance of 62.2kms a day – operating within the JAC’s fully-loaded urban range of 200km.

KiwiHarvest operates in Auckland, Dunedin, Queenstown, and Invercargill and has selected their most urban route in Auckland with start-stop traffic to gain the greatest benefits of the EV, and they will also be measuring this impact with EROAD to help measure their full emissions reduction.

The JAC truck is best suited to urban use, such as last mile delivery and distribution with its 200km fully loaded range. It also has a range of GVMs including 6T (that can be driven on a car licence), 7.5T and 9T and it comes in a variety of body types including the freezer- box body being used by KiwiHarvest.

The support of the JAC truck has also been bolstered by the recent government Low Emissions Heavy Vehicle Fund administered by EECA (the Energy Efficient Conservation Authority).

The JAC truck was part-funded by the Government’s Low Emissions Heavy Vehicle Fund, administered by EECA (Energy Efficiency and Conversation Authority). The JAC EV trucks are eligible for grants of up to 25% off the cab chassis price, capped at $35,000.