Vestas using its first electric trucks at South Korean wind farm

Danish wind turbine manufacturing giant Vestas has announced the first EV truck at the Youngduk Wind Farm in South Korea.

The truck – the Kia Bongo III – is part of Vestas South Korea’s larger plan to replace its fleet of vehicles by 2027.

The Youngduk Wind Farm is a 39.6MW onshore wind farm located in the eastern part of South Korea.

“The new EV truck will support our site activities everyday while reducing carbon footprint,” the company wrote in a LinkedIn post.

“Vestas aims to become a carbon-neutral company by 2030 without the use of carbon offsets. To help achieve this goal, Vestas is migrating its fleet to electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrids.”

The Kia Bongo III has a range of 211 kilometres per charge, and a battery capacity of 58.8 kWh.

The max torque is 395 Nm and the charging time is 47 minutes on a fast 100 kW charge from 10 to 80 percent.

The EV version is not available in Australia.

Vestas has also recently integrated over 300 Ford F-150 Lightnings into the service fleet in North America. This makes up around 20% of the 1800 strong fleet.

The F-150 Lightning is an electric ute with 390 kilometres of standard range, and a battery capacity of 98 kWh as standard.

Currently, the Lightning is also not available in Australia.

Vestas – which currently has a number of wind turbine projects in Australia – has pledged zero waste for wind turbines by 2040, and carbon neutral by 2030 (scope 1 and 2 emissions) without offsets.

However, work vehicles like the Bongo III and the Lightning might be harder to acquire in the Australian part of their operation, as work vehicles like these have been slow to make their way down under. However commercial electric vehicles present a $110 billion dollar opportunity according to think tank Beyond Zero Emissions.

Despite the slow start and even without many established companies bringing electric work vehicles to Australia, it seems to be ramping up, with companies like Foton have received hundreds of orders of light electric trucks in their first year of launching in Australia.