UBCO will donate up to 100 electric 4WD bicycles to the National Park Service – starting in California, Nevada and Oregon – to support trail improvements, site restoration, law enforcement and general operations in parks across the U.S. The National Park Service protects and preserves over 85 million acres across the U.S. The partnership is based on a goal alignment between both organizations: UBCO’s bike donation will provide National Parks employees with a safe, sustainable, quiet and environmentally friendly transportation option to perform essential work.

“Our focus is on safe, lightweight electric bikes that deliver carbon and operational cost savings at scale,” says Phil Harrison, senior vice president of special projects at UBCO. “Conservation is our top priority and it is a privilege to be able to donate vehicles to the National Park Service that make it easier for employees to do their jobs and preserve the parks for future generations.”

The goal of the partnership is to identify and validate use cases in the parks where the bikes could replace the use of larger internal combustion engine vehicles and enable new ways of working. The UBCO bikes will be delivered in two phases. Phase one will include six parks in the Pacific West region (see below), where UBCO will work with each park, fleet and safety manager to develop standard operating procedures. Phase two will deploy the remaining bikes in other parks across the U.S.

In Phase 1, UBCO bikes will be delivered to the following locations:

• Crater Lake National Park, Oregon
• Golden Gate National Recreation Area, California
• Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada
• Channel Islands National Park, California
• Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, California
• Joshua Tree National Park, California

“UBCO is a unique, wide-range electric 4WD utility bike,” says Oliver Hutaff, CEO of UBCO. “It is a fifth generation product with unmatched off-road performance. Our vehicles are used at scale in a variety of use cases by federal, state and local governments in the US, as well as in New Zealand, Australia and Europe, including the Department of Conservation in New Zealand, which manages over 20 million acres of land.”

“We are excited to work with the National Park Service and its park teams to achieve carbon reduction goals, help save operating fuel costs, and provide park operations with safe and innovative technology,” said Hutaff.

The bikes used in Phase 1 have already been well received. Chad Marin, chief ranger of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, says: “I’m excited about what we can accomplish with e-bikes as part of our toolkit.”

“Safe, sustainable and cost-effective transportation is essential to the operation of our park,” said Ray Murray, director of Partnerships Pacific West at the National Park Service. “We look forward to this partnership.”