Is There a Hybrid Truck on Your Holiday Wish List?
November 11, 2009 | Posted by Jana Holt in Fleet Vehicles
Last month, I traveled to Atlanta for the 2009 Hybrid Truck Users Forum (HTUF) annual conference. The event brings together truck manufacturers, suppliers, fleets and NGOs to discuss hybrid and high-efficiency vehicle technologies with a focus on reducing emissions. It’s amazing to see how the market has grown in just a few years. In 2005, there were no hybrid trucks on the market, and now there are at least 37 models on the road, in over 100 fleets.
Hybrid trucks can reduce both greenhouse gas emissions and fuel consumption by 30-50%. Over the 8-15 year lifetime of a truck, those fuel savings add up. Still, in a tough economy, many fleets who want to purchase hybrids don’t have the cash to do it. That’s why we’ve created an incentives guide, to help fleets find funding opportunities for hybrids.
Over a dozen states have funding programs to help bring down the cost of a hybrid, and several of these are open right now. For current opportunities see our pages for New York, Texas, New Jersey and New Hampshire.
One brand new state program that will open this winter is California’s Hybrid Voucher Incentive Program (HVIP). The program will reduce the cost of an eligible hybrid truck up to $45,000 at the point of sale. There are no applications to fill out and no waiting around for a rebate. The California Air Resources Board has selected CALSTART to administer the program, and CALSTART is working with CARB to finalize the implementation manual in the next few weeks. Take a look and let CALSTART know ASAP if you have any comments.
At the national level, EPA is now accepting applications for the 2009-2010 National Clean Diesel Funding Assistance Program (DERA). Last year’s program was extremely competitive – EPA received over 600 applications – totaling over $2 billion in requests — for the $300 million it eventually funded.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. While many hybrid replacement projects submitted by private fleets last year did not get funded, EPA tells us that those applications scored favorably and is encouraging fleets to try again.
If you know of any opportunities we’ve missed, please let us know!
Sign up to follow the Innovation Exchange blog via email or RSS.
Leave a Reply
User comments reflect the opinions of the responsible contributor only, and do not reflect the viewpoint of Environmental Defense Fund. We reserve the right to delete comments that may be considered offensive, illegal or inappropriate. We also reserve the right to delete duplicate comments, or comments that have no relationship to the original post.