GREATER SACRAMENTO ECONOMIC COUNCIL
U . S . headquarters in Sacramento and also to serve as the CMC ’ s director of technology . “ When we started this whole venture , the idea was never to copy and paste from Germany to California because it ’ s just not going to work . I just moved here and I know they ’ re two Western civilizations , but they ’ re so different .”
Last year when the pandemic made travel nearly impossible , PEM Motion accomplished the daunting feat of directing the completion of the CMC ’ s 25,000-square-foot ramp-up factory entirely through the work of remote teams . The facility , which opened in November 2020 , provides CMC clients with access to an advanced manufacturing facility that reduces research and production costs .
The goal of the CMC is to speed up the development-to-commercialization process . Lau says one of the first companies at the CMC to bring products to a test phase is Zeus Electric Chassis , which is producing medium-duty trucks with a payload of up to 11,000 pounds . SMUD is planning
to augment its fleet of repair trucks with vehicles from Zeus as part of its efforts to reduce carbon emissions , and also as a demonstration of how CMC clients and partners can support each other .
“ They really need a launchpad , they really need to showcase their piece , and they really need to find companies that want to deploy their trucks ,” Lau says . “ They want to come to Sacramento because GSEC and the CMC are going to make the connections for them .”
GSEC and the CMC are currently pursuing nearly two dozen new partners . In October , two utilities joined to become the latest partners : Southern California Edison and Alectra , which provides power to more than 1 million electricity customers in the Toronto area and is Canada ’ s largest municipally-owned utility .
“ I thought there could be very strong synergies between California and Ontario , given their common commitment to sustainability and their strong economic base in automotive manufacturing and
technology ,” says Alectra President and CEO Brian Bentz . “ We feel that the CMC could be at the leading edge of e-mobility innovation . We wanted to be part of this exciting initiative , learn from it and influence its outcomes in a positive way .”
Bentz says he expects other international members of the energy sector to participate in the CMC . There are currently about 20,000 electric vehicles in Alectra ’ s service area and he says participation in the CMC will help the utility prepare for what he foresees as “ high growth ” of EVs in the coming years .
“ E-mobility is key to meeting the statewide climate and clean air goals ,” says Caroline Choi , senior vice president of corporate affairs at Southern California Edison . “ Clean air is particularly important to us in Southern California as we have the distinction of being number-one in bad air quality , a position that we have had for far too long .” Choi says that working with the CMC and its partners will help achieve the state ’ s goals of having almost 8 million
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18 comstocksmag . com | December 2021