CARB Starts $20 Mln. Incentive Program for Purchases of Hybrid Trucks, Buses

By Eric Miller, Staff Reporter

This article appears in the Feb. 22 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

The California Air Resources Board has launched a $20 million funding assistance program to stimulate the purchase of hybrid trucks and buses.

The state’s Hybrid Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project is intended to offset as much as half the incremental cost of eligible hybrid medium- and heavy-duty vehicles.

Funding incentives range from $10,000 to $45,000, and each vehicle purchaser is limited to a maximum of 100 vouchers.

CARB officials said the grants will help commercialize hybrid technologies and support a ramp-up in production to help the state reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020 using clean alternative fuels.

“California is taking an aggressive approach to getting lower-polluting vehicles on the road more quickly,” Mary Nichols, chairwoman of CARB,  said in a statement. “This will accelerate our progress in cleaning up the air we breathe and reaching our climate change reduction goals.”

The incentive program is being administered through a partnership between CARB and CALSTART, an organization that promotes clean transportation technologies.

CALSTART will use less than 5% of the funding for outreach and to help implement the program.

Program funding eligibility is based on the purchase of selected hybrid vehicles, and fleet owners must agree to register and operate in California for three years the vehicles purchased using state funding.

Dealers, manufactures and fleet owners can learn more about the program at www.californiahvip.org.

Hybrid trucks and buses have been shown in testing to reduce both greenhouse gases and fuel use by 20% to 50%, depending on the vehicle and its application, CALSTART said.

Some hybrids have shown even greater reductions, especially when combining reductions from turning off the engine at work sites and at stops, incorporating advanced designs and using low-carbon fuels.

Hybrids further reduce by about 25% smog-causing emissions beyond the level of the certified engine in the vehicle, CARB said.