Electric-vehicle maker Randy Holmquist hopes city hall puts its money where its bylaw is.

His Errington’s firm’s try-before-you-buy strategy has lent Duncan works crews a Might-E Truck for several days and staffers are using it for parks work.

Works boss Abbas Farahbakhsh was basically happy with the pick-up rig delivered Thursday by Holmquist’s Canadian Electric Vehicles.

“I’ll look at actual applications for us.”

Given satisfaction, works may follow council’s green leaning — and its recent bylaw allowing electric vehicles on city streets — by eventually replacing a fuel-powered pick-up with a zero-emission Might-E, he said.

It would be Cowichan’s first publicly owned electric truck.

“We’ve got an ideal community for it,” eco-conscious Mayor Phil Kent said of the quiet, $25,000 electric truck.

(A fuel-driven Ford Ranger costs about $20,000, Holmquist said.)

“We’re mostly flat land so that puts less stress on an electric vehicle,” said Kent.

“We have to see what kind of load it’ll carry.”

Transport Canada limits on-road electric trucks to 3,000-pound gross vehicle weight “and that gives us a load capacity of about 500 pounds,” said Holmquist.

“But off road, in a park, we have a 1,500-pound carrying capacity.”

Operating costs are about a penny’s worth of power per kilometre.

The single-speed, rear-wheel-drive Might-E plugs into regular outlets and charges overnight.

It hits a speed of 40 kilometres per hour for 60 to 100 kilometres, depending on the load.

“We can do more range but speed is limited by Transport Canada because the trucks don’t meet all highway safety regulations of a normal (gas) car,” he explained.

Still, Kent was impressed by an electric rig used in Whistler’s pedestrian area.

He also saw electric trucks from Holmquist’s firm and other companies at the Vancouver International Car Show.

Talks with Holmquist started in the fall and he urges other municipalities to pass a carbon-busting bylaw like Duncan’s.

He also wants Victoria and Ottawa to “buy some trucks, be a customer.”

“They’re buying (Toyota) Priuses, and look at all the money we just dumped into GM,” he said of Canada’s $9.5-billion bailout.

Holmquist has sold about 50 Might-E rigs to UBC, Simon Fraser University, UVic, municipalities of Colwood, North Vancouver, Seattle, and Santa Monica, and elsewhere.