Stellantis – the parent company of Jeep, Chrysler, Fiat, Dodge, and Ram – says that it will comply with California’s stricter emissions policy requiring two-thirds of new cars to be zero-emissions or all-electric by 2030 – and will commit to the deal even if former President Donald Trump makes a return to office and tries to dismantle the policy.
Expand Expanding Close
An electric truck charging depot that can charge up to 96 trucks at once will service fleets moving cargo to and from the Port of Oakland.
Expand Expanding Close
Vietnamese EV automaker Vinfast just relayed that its new VF 8 electric SUV has been added to the list of eligible vehicles under the Clean Vehicle Rebate Project (CVRP) created by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). New and existing VinFast customers can now qualify for up to $7,500 in tax rebates in California, which can extend to other participating states. Learn how to apply below.
Expand Expanding Close
The California Air Resources Board voted unanimously today to implement perhaps its most significant regulation ever – the Advanced Clean Cars II regulation, which officially implements a planned ban on new gas car sales beginning in 2035 and could shake up the entire US auto market.
Expand Expanding Close
Fresh off the heels of a ban on billing-per-minute for electric vehicle charging, California is turning its sights to a ban of gas-powered lawn devices, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
As the Environmental Protection Agency prepares to introduce the final form of its proposal to freeze US fuel economy standards sometime in the near future, California is giving more indications of how it intends to fight the regulatory rollback.
Last year, California utilities started offering rebates to EV-owning customers based on a simple application process with few strings attached. Next year, California is releasing more funds to utilities for these programs, and in response utilities have increased the available incentives – SCE’s rebate has gone from $450 to $1,000, and PG&E has upped theirs from $500 to $800.
PG&E’s new rebate applies to any application received after January 1 – so if you just got an EV for Christmas (perhaps during Tesla’s year-end delivery rush), hold off on your application for a couple of days to save yourself $300. SCE’s increased rebate only applies to cars purchased or leased after January 1. If you just got your car, you’ll have to settle for the old $450 rebate, but this might help reduce the sting of missing out on the full federal tax credit if you take delivery of a Model 3 early next year, or a Bolt after GM’s tax credit is reduced in the second half of next year.
Norway, Paris/France, England, India, Germany, China and Scotland have all announced plans to ban the sale of gasoline vehicles in the upcoming decades. The US state of California might be close behind if a new bill expected to be introduced in the coming month by Assemblymember Phil Ting takes hold.
We knew it was coming for a while, but today the California Air Resources Board (CARB) confirmed the exact timeframe. The California Clean Vehicle Rebate (CVRP) will be increasing for low- and moderate-income drivers, while it will also introduce a cap for high-income drivers.
The change will apply statewide to vehicle purchases or leases effective March 29, 2016.
Expand
Expanding
Close
GULF OF MEXICO – APRIL 21: U.S. Coast Guard fire boat response crews battle the blazing remnants of offshore oil rig
The Bloomberg New Energy Finance report that came out last week (press release at bottom) says that in 25 years, electric vehicles will make up just 35% of new car sales. That means that in a generation from now, 65% of people will still be buying petroleum-based cars. It is hard to imagine a world where this few EVs makes any sense, even given BNEF’s own data.
The report and the numbers it presents are much too conservative for any reasonable circumstance. Take its own lede for instance:
“Continuing reductions in battery prices will bring the total cost of ownership of EVs below that for conventional-fuel vehicles by 2025, even with low oil prices.”.
Why would anyone buy a gasoline car when an electric or even a plug-in hybrid costs less than a gas car? Electric cars are cleaner, quieter, faster and safer than equivalent oil cars. Keep in mind that 2040 is 15 years after the cost of an electric car passes parity with oil in their scenario. Furthermore, by Bloomberg’s own estimates, batteries will reach less than one-third of today’s break-even prices.
At the core of this forecast is the work we have done on EV battery prices. Lithium-ion battery costs have already dropped by 65% since 2010, reaching $350 per kWh last year. We expect EV battery costs to be well below $120 per kWh by 2030, and to fall further after that as new chemistries come in.”
In fact, under certain reasonable circumstances, it costs less to own a Chevy SparkEV than a comparable gas version today. Fleet vehicles too. If you drive a lot and gas isn’t cheap but electricity is, the numbers already make sense.
The US department of energy has a handy calculator (above, current prices) which shows that in every state in the union, even with insanely cheap gas prices, it is still on average 50% cheaper to run on electricity than on gasoline. That means once battery/electric engine powertrains reach parity with combustion, it is really game over for oil.
So somehow 65% of people in the year 2040 will want to pay a huge premium for a fossil fuel engine car? Even if the world weren’t heating up this makes no sense at all…
Expand
Expanding
Close
On Thursday, California’s Air Resources Board had a meeting and status update on the state’s ‘Zero Emission Vehicle’ (ZEV) program where industry actors expressed their views on the clean vehicle market and the ZEV credit mandate. During a presentation to the board, Tesla’s Vice President of Business Development Diarmuid O’Connell argued that lobbying efforts from automakers effectively delayed fuel economy in the U.S. by about 20 years.
He added that the automotive industry used similar lobbying tactics to delay the commercialization of Zero Emission Vehicles. He said the effort delayed the state of California’s initial 1998 goal of 2% market penetration by 16 years – Zero Emission vehicles only reached 2% of the market in 2014.
Expand
Expanding
Close
In a letter sent to the California Attorney General and US Attorneys, Consumer Watchdog, a consumer and taxpayer protection organization, is asking for an investigation in the oil industry’s mail scheme campaign against the fuel reduction provision in California’s Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act.
Last week we reported on California state Democrats dropping the fuel reduction part of the bill, which would have call for a 50% reduction in fuel consumption in the state by 2030 through increase fuel efficiency and more electric vehicles, for which Senate Democratic Leader Kevin De Leon directly blamed the lobbying effort. But Consumer Watchdog is going further by saying that the oil industry’s campaign used “mail fraud”.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Over the weekend we reported that GM pushed the nationwide release of the 2016 Volt to next year and would only sell the car in CARB states in the meantime. Yesterday the company confirmed to Auto News that they simply don’t plan on releasing the 2016 model outside of their top EV markets, which coincidentally are mainly CARB states. Instead the company will release the 2017 version early for a nationwide launch.
Expand
Expanding
Close
In an effort to spur lackluster sales of electric cars, California, New York and six other states said on Thursday that they would work jointly to adopt a range of measures, including encouraging more charging stations and changing building codes, to make it easier to own an electric car.
The goal, they said, was to achieve sales of at least 3.3 million vehicles that did not have any emissions by 2025.
The states, which represent more than a quarter of the national car market, said they would seek to develop charging stations that all took the same form of payment, simplify rules for installing chargers and set building codes and other regulations to require the stations at workplaces, multifamily residences and at other places.
Charging stations, charging stations, charging stations.
