NYC and LA Are Teaming Up to Fight for EVs
Key takeaways
- Los Angeles County, a car town, has its own EV goals: 100 percent fleet electrification by 2045, which would require replacing all 20,000 of the fleet’s vehicles.
- So on Thursday, the country’s most-populous city announced it would band together with the country’s most-populous county to form what it hopes is a powerful advocacy bloc for electric vehicles.
- US vehicle manufacturers simply don’t make electric versions of some of the vehicles the city needs: electric passenger vans, fire department pumper trucks that fit city specifications, and, for New York, snowplows.
Why this matters: a development in AI with implications for how people work, create, and decide.
Courtesy of NYC Department of Citywide Administrative Services Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story New York City is not a car town. But pay attention as you walk, bike, or, sure, drive around the country’s most populous city, and you might notice a car trend: an increasing number of its vehicles are electric. The city government operates some 5,800 EVs, plus 4,700 hybrid vehicles—Parks Department pickups, Police Department crossover SUVs, school buses, paramedic response vehicles, even some hulking garbage trucks. A local law requires the city to transition its entire light- and medium-duty fleet to batteries by 2035 and its trucks by 2038.
Los Angeles County, a car town, has its own EV goals: 100 percent fleet electrification by 2045, which would require replacing all 20,000 of the fleet’s vehicles. With just 600 electric vehicles and 350 plug-ins so far, officials have plenty of work to do.
So on Thursday, the country’s most-populous city announced it would band together with the country’s most-populous county to form what it hopes is a powerful advocacy bloc for electric vehicles. The “bicoastal bridge,” as officials are calling it, will use their combined purchasing power to push manufacturers to keep up the electric work, even despite the industry’s wider challenges.