When the City of Fort Lauderdale ran the numbers on converting its light-duty vehicle fleet to electric, the data surprised them. Electric vehicles cost more to purchase — in this case, $5.4 million more across 630 cars, trucks, and vans. But when the city factored in the true cost of owning the vehicles over their seven-year lifespan, including fuel, maintenance, and charging, the total came out lower: $26 million for an all-electric fleet, compared to $30 million to keep buying gas-powered vehicles.
That analysis is now steering a municipal fleet transition that will lower costs for taxpayers. Fort Lauderdale has committed to converting 100% of its non-emergency, light-duty vehicles to lower-cost electric by 2035, rolling the change into the fleet’s existing seven-year replacement cycle rather than pursuing a higher up-front cost with an all-at-once overhaul. The plan impacts roughly 600 light-duty, non-emergency vehicles and is being carried out by two city teams working in tandem: Fleet Services, which supplied the real-world vehicle data, and Sustainability, which built that data into a long-term financial model. The result is a case city leaders say benefits the community on cost alone.
A Conversation, Not a Policy
The path to electrification started with a presentation, not a mandate. Fort Lauderdale’s Sustainability Advisory Board invited Rick Longobart, Manager of the City of Raleigh’s Fleet Operations, to walk them through Raleigh’s own transition of more than 2,300 vehicles to electric. Longobart’s presentation gave the Board a real-world blueprint for evaluating both the costs and savings of electrification at scale.
Drew Newstrom, Fort Lauderdale’s Fleet Services Program Manager, followed up with a presentation of his own, making the case that converting the city’s fleet would meaningfully cut both maintenance and fuel spending. By April 2025, the Board had approved a formal recommendation to the City Commission backing fleet electrification and setting the 2035 target for non-emergency light-duty vehicles.
Getting city staff on board took more than a policy vote. Recognizing that hesitation around EVs often comes from unfamiliarity rather than any real drawback, Fleet Services converted its entire loaner vehicle fleet to Nissan Leafs. Any employee who needed a loaner car, from department heads to field technicians, got an EV by default. That decision put the technology directly in the hands of people who might never have chosen it voluntarily, and it built a base of employees who could speak to EVs from firsthand experience rather than assumption. Since then, this groundwork carried into the City’s recent EV test drive event, which gave municipal employees outside of Fleet Services a hands-on opportunity to get behind the wheel of the vehicles and embrace the technology.
By June 2025, Sustainability Administrator Luz Ramirez was presenting a full total cost of ownership model to the City Commission, projecting a 73% reduction in fuel costs and a 38% reduction in maintenance costs through gradual electrification. “That presentation was the stepping stone to all of this work,” Ramirez said. “It was the point where vision and fiscal responsibility converged.”
Breaking Down the $26 Million
The city’s analysis weighed four cost categories for both electric and gas-powered vehicles: depreciation, maintenance, fuel or charging costs, and charging infrastructure.
EVs lose the depreciation comparison outright. Their higher purchase price — $33.7 million total, versus $28.3 million for gas equivalents — pushes projected depreciation to $21.9 million, compared to $18.4 million for internal combustion vehicles. But that gap is more than offset elsewhere. Fort Lauderdale currently spends $9.01 million on gasoline over a seven-year period; the equivalent charging and infrastructure costs for an EV fleet come to roughly $2.1 million, a savings of nearly $6.8 million. Maintenance adds another $1.26 million in savings, with EVs projected at $1.93 million against $3.19 million for gas vehicles — the product of fewer moving parts, no oil changes, and less brake wear from regenerative braking.
Notably, the city built its fuel savings estimate on conservative assumptions. Rather than modeling future gas price increases, Sustainability held the $9.01 million fuel figure flat across all seven years, using it as a floor rather than a projection. “Our $4 million savings projection assumes fuel costs never go up,” the team noted — meaning that if gas prices climb, as they typically have over any seven-year window, the savings case only strengthens. That point took on added weight given that the analysis predates the gasoline price increases seen in spring and early summer of 2026.
Why Fort Lauderdale Built Its Own Model
Many municipalities lean on AFLEET, a modeling tool that offers a quick, directionally useful estimate of fleet conversion costs. Fort Lauderdale used it as a reference but ultimately built its own model in-house, prioritizing data specific to its own fleet over AFLEET’s national averages and default assumptions.
That meant pulling actual fuel expenditures, maintenance costs by vehicle type, purchase prices, and total vehicle miles traveled directly from Fleet Services’ own records. For other cities considering the same approach, that data list — vehicle count by class and fuel type, ownership duration, annual mileage, fuel economy, purchase price, and maintenance cost per mile — is the starting checklist. One gap worth flagging: AFLEET doesn’t account for charging infrastructure costs, which the city’s analysis shows can represent a meaningful capital investment on its own.
“When you are managing taxpayer dollars, you can’t rely on rough estimates or national averages,” noted Acting City Manager Christopher Cooper. “By bringing our Fleet and Sustainability teams together to build our own total cost model, we proved that responsible stewardship and forward-thinking innovation go hand in hand. This isn’t just an environmental goal—it’s a sound operational investment for Fort Lauderdale.”
Electrifying the Police Fleet
Rather than converting the fleet all at once, Fort Lauderdale is starting with three police use cases identified through close coordination between Fleet Services and police leadership: K9 units, which idle constantly and burn fuel accordingly; traffic safety vehicles, which don’t need pursuit capability; and plainclothes investigators, who tend to drive lower, more predictable mileage. Each was chosen because the use case matches current EV range and capability.
Skepticism from officers centered on practical concerns — range, reliability, whether the vehicles could actually do the job — the kind of resistance Newstrom says responds better to a specific plan than a broad pitch. Police vehicles represent roughly half of Fort Lauderdale’s total fleet, making law enforcement the single largest opportunity for future conversion. But Newstrom is deliberately not rushing it. “We have one real opportunity to convert half the fleet, and we intend to do it right,” he said, citing the risk of moving too fast, having a poor experience, and losing the trust built with police leadership.
Building the Charging Network Ahead of Demand
Infrastructure costs are grounded in a contract the city has already executed: $8,905 per charger, including labor and installation. Using an industry-standard ratio of one charger for every four vehicles, the city’s 630 light-duty vehicles require 158 chargers total. With 32 already installed, that leaves 126 new chargers to build, at a total cost of just over $1.12 million.
Fleet Services and Sustainability are sequencing that buildout ahead of vehicle replacements, so that by the time a gas vehicle reaches the end of its seven-year cycle and is swapped for an EV, the charging infrastructure is already operating at the right facility.
The Reliability Case, in the Fleet’s Own Numbers
If the cost model made the financial argument, it was the city’s own vehicles that made the operational one. Fort Lauderdale’s Nissan Leafs have been in service for seven years and have logged under ten total hours of downtime — all of it for wiper blades and tires.
“We can stock virtually everything we need for our EV fleet without dedicating a large portion of our warehouse to it, which frees up space and budget for the parts we still need for the rest of the fleet,” Newstrom said. “That kind of reliability has a real dollar value when you’re managing a fleet of this size.”
That track record did double duty with city commissioners, who pressed on both total cost and long-term reliability before approving the plan.
“By transitioning our fleet, we are showing how local governments can lead on this important issue for our planet,” said Mayor Dean J. Trantalis. “We’re cutting operational costs for our taxpayers while building a cleaner, more resilient Fort Lauderdale for generations to come.”
The total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis answered the cost question; the Leaf data answered the reliability one. “It is not a projection or a manufacturer’s claim,” Newstrom said. “It is our own maintenance record.”
What’s Next — and What’s Anticipated
The current plan is deliberately scoped to light-duty, non-emergency vehicles. Heavier equipment and emergency vehicles are being held back until the technology matures further. In the meantime, Fleet Services is investing in expertise: the team recently added a dedicated EV technician position and is partnering with Toyota, Ford, and General Motors to train existing staff on battery systems, charging infrastructure, and diagnostics — knowledge Newstrom says will transfer across vehicle classes as heavy-duty and emergency EV options develop.
The city’s efforts have already drawn outside recognition. Fort Lauderdale ranked 39th in the 2025 Green Fleet Awards, a national benchmark of municipal and corporate fleet sustainability — a marker city officials point to as evidence the program is competitive well beyond Florida.
Advice for Other Cities
Asked what she’d tell another Florida city just starting this process, Ramirez pointed not to a modeling tool but to a partnership. Fleet Services brought the operational data and field knowledge; Sustainability brought the analytical framework to translate it into a policy recommendation. Neither team could have built a defensible case alone.
“Build that interdepartmental bridge first,” Ramirez and Newstrom advised, “before exploring modeling tools.”
For Fort Lauderdale, that bridge — more than any single spreadsheet — is what turned an EV pilot into a citywide commitment.
