Comstock's magazine 1217 - December 2017 | Page 70

n TRANSPORTATION
loyd Levine was expecting a lightweight “glorified
golf cart” the first time he got behind the wheel of
an electric car. “So when I shut the door and it went
‘thump,’ that was my first thought — this was a sol-
id car,” Levine says. “It drove incredibly smoothly,
it felt solid on the road, and when you accelerated,
boy that car zoomed. It broke every impression I had
at the time of an electric vehicle.”
This was during the late ‘90s, when the
first mass-produced, battery-powered vehi-
cle from General Motors became available
in select U.S. cities through limited lease-only agreements.
Known as the EV1, the plug was pulled on the leasing program
after a brief and limited market study into the feasibility of
producing and marketing a commuter electric vehicle.
Most of the repossessed cars were literally crushed in a
move that drew wrath from customers, electric car enthusi-
asts and environmental groups. Its abrupt discontinuation is
chronicled in the documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?”
and remains a contentious, historically significant industry
event.
Levine, a state legislator at the time, is now director of me-
dia and public relations for the Sacramento Electric Vehicle
Association — and the proud owner of a Chevy Volt, a plug-in
hybrid electric vehicle he charges at night. Visits to the gas
station are rare, as Levine goes through about a gallon of fuel
each month. He jokes that he’s never spilled electricity or had
trouble washing the smell off his hands.
As a proponent of quashing electric vehicle myths and
getting more “butts in seats,” Levine is in good company
with other EV advocates and agencies that have welcomed
the news of Sacramento’s designation as Volkswagon’s first
“Green City,” an experimental playground for zero-emission
vehicle infrastructure, car-sharing services, delivery fleet
and education.
As a Green City, Sacramento will receive a $44 million
investment from Electrify America, a subsidiary of VW and
fallout of the “Dieselgate” scandal in which the German au-
tomaker was caught cheating on diesel-emissions tests. (In
what’s been the biggest auto industry scandal to date, the
$14.7 billion settlement is the largest as well.) Sacramento
beat out Los Angeles this past summer as the first of two
Green Cities. So far no other city has been chosen.
City officials and EV advocates are banking on this op-
portunity to mark the Capital Region as a hub for automotive
technology, and are already receiving interest from car and
technology companies looking to put down roots.
“Northern California is being uniquely positioned to be
a place where clean vehicle technology is being done,” says
Matt Carpenter, director of transportation services for the
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comstocksmag.com | December 2017
Sacramento Area Council of Governments. “We can build on
the cluster happening with Tesla and other technology hap-
pening in the Bay Area. It’s a near-term investment, but we
can use it as a catalyst for long-term investment.”
SEEING GREEN
The Sacramento money is only a portion of VW’s $800 million
commitment to California over the course of four 30-month
investment cycles. The California Air Resources Board will
oversee Electrify America’s progress, approve its investment
plans, and require quarterly and annual reports. An indepen-
dent auditor will also review VW’s project implementation
and finances.
The investment has the potential to transform the area,
says Carpenter. “The significant amount of money to pro-
mote zero-emission vehicles is going to be great and will
allow us to implement some of the plans already in place,” he
says. “There are already sparks in innovation here, and that’s
why we were chosen.”
The first statewide spending cycle designates $120 mil-
lion to be spent on 350 neighborhood charging stations
and 50 fast-charging stations, to be deployed in Los Ange-
les, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose and
Fresno. Another $20 million will go toward brand-neutral,
multilingual public awareness campaigns. Added to Sac-
ramento’s $44 million Green City price tag, that leaves $16
million for Electrify America’s internal purposes.
“There are a lot of attributes of Sacramento and the re-
gion that make it a great microcosm of the country,” says
Mike McKeever, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg’s
chief of staff and whose leadership and team-making ca-
pabilities the mayor credits for capturing the Green City
designation. McKeever, who previously headed SACOG,
adds that Sacramento is an ideal test bed for emerging
transportat ion technologies due to its inf luence as the
capital of the sixth largest economy in the world. “It’s
big enough to have urban dynamics, but not so huge that
things can’t get done,” he says.
LAYING THE GROUNDWORK
While the buzz is strong, concepts and projects are in the
early phases of discussion. But on the city level, two goals
stand out, says Levine of the Sacramento Electric Vehicle As-
sociation: first, highly visible, high-impact projects that will
promote electric vehicles; second, eliminating major sources
of pollution (such as taxi, bus or other fleet vehicles).
“We don’t know exactly what the Green Cities grants will
end up paying for,” Levine says. “Volkswagen is still in pro-
cess of [deciding] what will be funded and how, but some
concepts are very exciting.”