More than $109 million of California’s share of cleaner vehicle money funded by the giant settlement in Volkswagen diesel scandal will be used to purchase, among other things, Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEVs) for draining.
The South Coast Quality Management District (AQMD) announced earlier this month that it is releasing approximately $109.3 million for two categories of cleaner energy vehicle purchases. The first is for “freight and marine combustion projects”, which includes a wide range of vehicles, including class 7 and 8 trucks, as well as ZEV locomotives.
The second category — zero-emission dump trucks — has the potential to impact implementation of the state’s Advanced Clean Fleets (ACF) rule and has garnered the most near-term attention. The ACF rule requires that any new transportation vehicle registered in the state after January 1, 2024 must have zero emissions, although enforcement of that rule has been put on hold by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) while legal issues are settled .
Funds released by the Volkswagen Environmental Mitigation Trust in the Class 8 ZEV truck category can be used for vehicles other than water delivery, including dump trucks and concrete mixers.
Candidates were able to start paying the funds starting from March 5. South Coast AQMD said the window for funding will remain open until all funds are expressed. A spokeswoman said the agency expects this round of funding to be mandatory until 2028.
While it’s not the first time South Coast AQMD has released funds from the Vokswagen trust to buy clean vehicles, including ZEVs, a spokeswoman said the previous edition disbursed $41 million, so the latest round is much larger.
The $109 million is what remains of the two funds awarded by the state to AQMD for vehicle purchases.
Funding for ZEVs may include other trucks, but the main ZEV push in California has been withdrawn, in part because of the ACF rule that, when finally implemented, will bar non-ZEV trucks from being added to the state’s water carrier registry .
The Bay Area AQMD was allocated $80 million as part of the Volkswagen disbursement, with $70 million of that going to projects related to freight and marine transportation. The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District got $130 million, but it’s all for buses. CARB has an additional $63 million in reserve.
The maximum amount that can be used for a transport vehicle is $240,000 per truck.
Under combustion freight and marine project financing, the limit is $102,000 for a replacement vehicle, whether it’s what the state calls a pickup truck or other types of trucks. The limit is $60,000 for a repower. The California Air Resources Board defines a retrofit as “(replacing) the engine in a vehicle with another engine that meets a subsequent engine emission standard.”
Funding in this category can also be allocated to applications such as tugs and locomotives.
Volkswagen’s set-aside funding joins other ZEV and clean vehicle incentives in California. Specifically, $140 million is available for dump trucks under the California Hybrid and Zero Emission Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project, commonly known as HVIP. Of that $140 million is California $60 million director at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, though there are limits to how much the incentives will pay.
The latest funding release from South Coast AQMD is part of a total of $423 million California has received from the Volkswagen trust. It’s part of nearly $2 billion in funding Volkswagen is providing after reaching a settlement with the federal government in 2016 and 2017 over Volkswagen’s efforts to avoid failing emissions tests on its diesel engines sold in the US.
When the EPA announced the settlement with Volkswagen, said nearly 600,000 vehicles between 2009 and 2016 were equipped with “defeat devices … designed to cheat federal emissions tests.” Avoiding limits on nitrogen oxide emissions was the primary objective of the system.
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