Advanced Energy Perspectives

When most people think about electric cars and California, they think about Tesla. The buzzy automaker was the first all-electric vehicle (EV) company to reach mass production. Having grown significantly over the past decade, the company now employs over 30,000 workers in California between the solar-storage-EV company’s corporate headquarters in Palo Alto and EV assembly factory in Fremont. But there’s a quieter yet equally important story of EV industry growth unfolding in nearly every corner of the state.

A few weeks ago, the Biden administration unveiled a $2 trillion plan to overhaul U.S. infrastructure. The American Jobs Plan included $174 billion for vehicle electrification to expedite the transportation industry’s shift away from fossil fuels. This funding targets the production of not only vehicles, but battery technologies, component parts, and raw materials used across the entire electric vehicle supply chain. That’s because electric vehicles (EVs) are different – and therein lies an opportunity for businesses, workers, and entire states to join the U.S. auto industry as transportation goes electric. One of those states is Illinois, where see the beginning of an electric transportation (ET) industry already in place, and poised to grow.

Setting out toward an advanced transportation future can feel like a mythic quest, given the array of investments, organizations, policies, and regulations required. Only a handful of states have truly embarked upon it, and none have reached the promised land yet. But a new entrant, Virginia, has embarked on that journey, and after a quick legislative session just ended, is making impressive headway.

So the United States Postal Service went shopping for what it called its “next generation” of delivery vehicles. But the USPS doesn’t go shopping like the rest of us, especially because, when it talks about “next generation,” the Postal Service means vehicles that it expects to be in service for decades. And especially when it’s doing so at a time when the entire auto industry is making a transition from internal combustion engines to electric drive trains, with automakers declaring an all-EV future and major fleet operators placing orders for all-electric trucks and delivery vans by the hundred thousands. So what can you call it when the USPS places an order for its next-generation vehicles based mostly on last-generation vehicle technology? We call it a missed delivery.

Nevada has taken many important steps toward creating an electrified transportation future. In June, Governor Sisolak announced the Clean Cars Initiative, which is a program designed to bring more low-emission and zero-emission cars and light duty trucks to Nevada dealerships. Then, the Nevada Climate Strategy and Division of Environmental Protection’s 2020 Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory report echoed the need for thoughtful state policy to expand consumer choice and build out charging infrastructure in order to transform the transportation sector. In addition to their focus on cars and light trucks, they both recognize that electrifying medium- and heavy-duty vehicles will also be critical to meeting  the state’s commitment to a zero-emission future. Fleet ownership will be the key.