Our friends over at EV Volumes — a Silver Sponsor of our upcoming Cleantech Revolution Tour conference in Berlin+Wroclaw — recently shared some interesting state-specific electric car sales data with us. The most notable finding is clear enough in the following chart:
A proposed new budget deal in Congress would preserve funding to electrify rail lines between San Jose and San Francisco. That corridor is one of the busiest in the nation as it serves the tech community on the San Francisco peninsular known as Silicon Valley. Bringing electrification to the rail transport system would have a significant effect on carbon emissions in the region and reduce the area’s well known traffic congestion.
The California Air Resources Board’s (CARB’s) ruling on the proposed settlement from the dieselgate scandal will come very soon. The Volkswagen Group of America is proposing to invest $2 billion into the nation’s zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) infrastructure over the next 10 years. A significant portion of this investment is earmarked for California. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved the deal. Will California accept Volkswagen’s $800,000 million settlement?
In a bid to simplify the often convoluted process of getting a car, Hyundai is introducing a new subscription program in California that will allow interested parties to gain access to an Ioniq Electric for as little as $275 a month.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles has granted Apple a permit to test self-driving vehicles in the state, the regulatory body recently revealed. The permit that was granted allows Apple to perform self-driving vehicle testing operations in 3 different vehicles, with 6 different drivers.
A new residential development by Lafferty Communities in Manteca, California, will come with a valuable perk. Every one of the 126 single-family homes in the new Oakwood Shores neighborhood will come with 8 solar panels from SolarWorld. Each 2.72 kilowatt system will include Enphase microinverters and is being manufactured in the United States exclusively for PetersenDean Roofing & Solar, who will install them on the homes as they are completed.
The California Air Resources Board, often referred to simply as CARB, will be granting a total of $6 million in awards as part of the Car Sharing and Mobility Options Pilot Project for Fiscal Year 2016–17.
The California state legislature has passed a new $52.4 billion bill known as the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017 (SB1) that will see owners of zero-emissions vehicles charged an annual fee of $100. The charge is intended to offset the gasoline taxes that zero-emissions vehicle owners don’t pay, but that’s not all.
The large and growing amount of solar generation has occasionally driven power prices on the CAISO power exchange during late winter and early spring daylight hours to very low, and sometimes negative, prices. However, consumers in California continue to pay average retail electricity prices that are among the highest in the nation.
Newly published statistics from California show that Uber’s self-driving cars are far and away the worst of the 6 major firms testing in the state with regard to disengagement rates — the rates at which drivers/engineers are forced to take control of the car because of limitations or problems with the self-driving tech.
