Speed demon: EV market moving at an incredible pace

July 17, 2015 | By Barbara Vergetis Lundin

Electric vehicles (EV) are getting a boost from all sides -- most recently, by the Sierra Club, who has released an updated interactive Electric Vehicle Guide, featuring an EV consumer incentive database. Searchable by zip code, the database identifies what rebates, tax credits, EV charging incentives, utility programs, and discounts are available in each user's community.

Credit: Mariordo - Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz/Wikimedia Commons

The EV Guide shows that, since May 2015 alone, California has a new program to help low-income residents go electric and a new initiative that offers small business owners and landlords rebates of up to 15 percent for installing electric vehicle charging stations; Connecticut began providing an immediate rebate at the dealership of up to $3,500 with the purchase or lease an electric car; Tennessee initiated its own EV rebate program; and Great River Electric of Minnesota now offers a program that guarantees customers 100 percent wind power to charge their EVs for no additional cost.

"Vehicle tailpipes emit 20 pounds of carbon dioxide and other global warming gases for every gallon of gas burned. It should be no surprise that nearly half of all Americans -- nearly 150 million -- live in regions failing to meet minimum federal air quality standards and that health risks like asthma, bronchitis, and cancer are on the rise," said California State Treasurer John Chiang, who announced the $2 million financing program, which incentivizes lenders to finance the installation of electrical vehicle charging stations by offering coverage against losses resulting from a loan default. "While California leads the nation in electrical vehicle sales, millions of consumers don't consider them to be a viable alternative because the absence of a sufficient network of charging stations has only amplified concerns over range limitations…new financing tools [are] aimed at building the electrical vehicle infrastructure necessary to make gasoline-burning cars relics of the past."

The result of a partnership between the Energy Commission and the California Pollution Control Financing Authority (CPCFA), chaired by Chiang, the Electric Vehicle Charging Station (EVCS) Financing Program was developed to help achieve the state's zero-emission vehicle goals laid out in Governor Jerry Brown's Executive Order B-16-2012, which tasked state agencies to collaborate and develop innovative and sustainable financing programs to develop the electric vehicle infrastructure necessary to support 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles on California's roadways by 2025. The program is modeled after CPCFA's successful and well-established California Capital Access Program (CalCAP), which encourages banks and other financial institutions to make loans to small businesses that have difficulty obtaining financing.

"The electric car market moves at an incredible pace, with several new models coming on to the market each year. This newly updated EV guide sifts through the cars and incentives available to find the perfect match for people's specific needs," said Gina Coplon-Newfield, director of Sierra Club's Electric Vehicles Initiative. "With significantly lower emissions than traditional vehicles, a switch to electric vehicles helps reduce our dependence on dirty fuels and reduce our carbon footprint. Our newly updated electric vehicle guide not only lets the users pick out the right car for their families, but the right car for the planet, too."

Nationwide, EVs are cleaner than conventional vehicles -- even when considering the emissions from the electricity sources used to charge the vehicles -- but just how much cleaner does vary from region to region. For example, the Sierra Club online EV Guide shows that a Nissan Leaf is 53 percent lower in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than a Toyota Camry in Miami and 70 percent lower in GHG emissions in San Francisco. The savings is the same for both -- on average $802 a year in fueling costs.

Each year, American passenger cars and trucks burn 121 billion gallons of gasoline and release upwards of 3 trillion pounds of carbon pollution into the air through both vehicle tailpipes and the "upstream" emissions from extracting, refining, and transporting the oil to our vehicles. Electric Vehicles can change this -- the charging of an electric car leads to significantly less carbon dioxide pollution than the CO2 pollution from nearly all of today's conventional cars in every region of the country (when doing a "well to wheels comparison"), according to Sierra Club.

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