California is significantly upping the ante in its quest to get more electric cars on the road.
In his final State-of-the-State address this week, Governor Jerry Brown laid out the state’s ambitions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Then, he dropped something startling.
“To meet these ambitious goals,” Brown tossed out almost casually, “we’ll need five million zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2030, and we’re gonna get there, believe me.”
So I spent some time at the 2018 Washington Auto Show, reviewing a whole host of light-duty vehicles – everything from pickup trucks and cargo vans to sports cars, with a few “classics” interspersed in there for good measure.
Two in particular caught my eye: the latest iteration of the Nissan Leaf all-electric battery-powered sedan and the experimental FCR (short for “Fine Comfort Ride”) fuel cell-fired prototype built by Toyota.
So why should truckers care about these small vehicles; ones that can’t haul a decent of load of freight?
As the barriers to widespread electric car adoption continue to fall, a new report suggests California, a leader in EV adoption, is likely to succeed with its goal to have 1.5 million electric vehicles on the road by 2025.
Zero-emission vehicles could become "as ubiquitous as smartphones" in California by 2040, according to the author of a report out today that analyzes the state's progress toward Gov. Jerry Brown's goals to transform the state's automobile stock.
In 2012, Brown called for 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles on California roads by 2025. On Thursday, he upped the ante to five million ZEVs by 2030. Just over 362,000 ZEVs have been sold in California so far, almost half of the nation's total, but it's the rate of those sales that analysts find telling.
Even though there are only about 340,000 zero-emission vehicles in California today, the state is on par to reach its goal of 1.5 million by 2025.
This is according to a new report by the group Next 10. “The range of electric vehicles continues to go up and up,” said Noel Perry with the public policy think tank. “And the number of choices that consumers are finding in the showrooms is also going up.”
