Quote:
The California Air Resources Board approved $27 million for its Air Quality Improvement Program, a statewide effort to provide incentives for the purchase of advanced-technology passenger cars and heavy-duty trucks.
ARB will use the majority of those funds for its California Clean Vehicle Rebate Project to provide incentives for the purchase of zero-emission and plug-in hybrid passenger cars. Complementing this investment will be up to an additional $5 million dollars from the California Energy Commission.
There will also be an additional $10 million in incentives for hybrid and zero-emission trucks and buses. Another $2 million of funding will be used for advanced-technology demonstration projects supporting the commercialization of new vehicle and equipment technologies.
Since this program began in 2008 there have been more than 7,500 passenger cars and more than a thousand trucks or buses that have received incentives through the Air Quality Improvement Program.
The program is designed to accelerate the number of ultra-clean vehicles sold in California and help establish a sustainable market. The program also supports the Advanced Clean Car regulation ARB adopted earlier this year. (Earlier post.) That regulatory package builds on California’s already tough standards to reduce smog-forming and greenhouse gas emissions, including a separate requirement that one in seven new cars sold in 2025 in California be zero emission.
Information on the rebate project, including an application and required documents, list of eligible vehicles, and real-time funding status is available at
www.cvrp.energycenter.org.
The vehicle rebate project is one of several consumer incentives funded under California Alternative and Renewable Fuel, Vehicle Technology, Clean Air, and Carbon Reduction Act of 2007 (AB 118).
The Air Quality Improvement Program (AQIP) is a voluntary incentive program created under that law, allowing up to $40 million per year, depending on revenues, through 2015 for ARB to fund advanced technologies needed to meet long-term air quality and climate change goals.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2012/06/arb-20120629.html
So the fact that these cars are selling better in a state with additional subsidies is proof that hybrids are gaining more public acceptance?
Nice logic there.
The only true way to tell how popular and valuable these cars are to the public is to allow the consumer to pay full value of the labor/material/energy that it took to bring them to market.
Subsidies necessarily short circuit this resource utilization feedback.
