California's Electric-Car Future
California's energy future is visible in the underground garage of a luxury condominium that rises behind the façade of a former San Francisco muffler shop. The parking spaces come equipped with charging stations for electric cars -- an amenity that, as of next year, the city will require.
From article, (The [California] state government, for its part, is creating an array of incentives to get people, school districts and businesses to go electric: rebates and loan assistance for buyers of electric and hybrid cars (with more money available for low-income buyers); electric car sharing programs; clean vehicles for farm-worker van pools; electric school buses, and vouchers to help businesses buy trucks, tractors, bulldozers, forklifts -- whatever kind of mobile machinery they use.
California’s cap and trade program, which puts a rising price on greenhouse-gas emissions, is a crucial part of its plan. Not only has the program modestly raised the price of gasoline, making electric cars marginally more competitive, it helps pay for the aforementioned experiments. Proceeds from the program’s emissions permit auctions raise almost $2 billion a year.
The state’s goal -- 1.5 million zero-emissions vehicles by 2025 -- still seems distant. There are only about 340,000 electric cars in the state right now, bought over the last six years, and Californians already buy almost half of all electric cars sold in the U.S. Having pledged to lower its greenhouse-gas emissions 40 percent by 2030, however -- the greatest share of which come from car and truck tailpipes -- California is trying almost everything.)
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