California adds new electric-vehicle perk
California’s plug-in electric vehicle drivers are about to get new financial perks.
Members of the California Public Utilities Commission are scheduled to sign off today on guidelines for an annual credit against utility bills or a one-time vehicle rebate. The commission will let individual utilities decide which incentive to offer.
Southern California Edison is proposing a one-time rebate of $250 to $350 per new vehicle owner.
San Diego Gas & Electric intends to provide an annual bill credit but declined to say how much.
“We just don’t have any specific numbers at this point. It’s too early,” said Erin Coller, an SDG&E spokeswoman. “The numbers are not available right now.”
Scott Murtishaw, energy adviser to utilities commission President Michael Peevey, said new incentives could be available in late-2015 as final utility applications are approved.
About 12,600 electric vehicle users in San Diego and southern Orange counties would be eligible for SDG&E’s bill credit. A much smaller number of personal vehicles running on compressed natural gas will receive their own perk — a reduction in the price of natural gas at public access fueling stations run by SDG&E.
The new clean-vehicle incentives, in the works for years, would give electric vehicles a boost at a crucial moment. Big declines in gasoline prices have reduced the immediate fuel savings that come with switching to a plug-in vehicle. The impact on sales won’t be clear until more statistics are released early next year.
General Motors, maker of the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt, endorsed both the bill credit and up-front rebate options as “meaningful incentives,” in a letter this month to state regulators. The Volt is the nation’s second-best selling plug-in at about $34,000.
State and federal authorities are encouraging drivers to switch to vehicles that run on relatively clean power from the electric grid. Current state rebates and federal tax credits can knock $10,000 off the initial expense of a new vehicle. Certain zero- and low-emission vehicles qualify for full access to express HOV-lanes.
Plug-in vehicle sales in California surpassed 100,000 earlier this year, and currently represent about 3 percent of personal vehicle sales. The state wants to put 1.5 million electric vehicles on the road by 2025.
Retail prices for plug-in electric vehicles start at around $30,000 for the Nissan Leaf and run to $70,000 or more for a luxury Tesla Model S with a big battery for extended driving range.
The new bill credit is an outgrowth of California’s efforts to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide produced by fuel for cars. The state has given oil refiners and motor-fuel producers until 2020 to reduce this amount by 10 percent.
One tool for meeting that standard is to purchase credits from utilities supplying electricity to passenger vehicles.
Coller of SDG&E said an individual electric vehicle generates about two pollution credits a year — the basis for the annual bill reduction. The auction value of each credit fell to $26 in November from figures as high as $55 in previous years.
Those fluctuating market prices make it difficult for the utility to estimate the new incentive ahead of time.
The state’s three major investor owned utilities, including SDG&E, have been supportive of the state’s push to get more electric vehicles on the road.
The new incentive program is expected to help utilities manage the new demands of electric vehicles on the grid by clearly identifying the number of vehicles and where owners live as people come forward to claim the benefit.
