Electric Ride-share Comes to Sacramento

Electric Ride-share Comes to Sacramento

Early in this new year, VW will start delivering the rest of 142 all-electric Golf sedans to 70 locations in the area for a ride-sharing program like ZipCar set up by Southern California-based Envoy and Electrify America.  Twenty vehicles were delivered in 2018 in an initial phase.

This is part of the emissions fraud case settlement with VW.  The vehicles have an estimated range of 125 miles.  Sacramento was selected as a pioneer area for this deployment after a successful campaign by local officials and activists as a premier site to test this new approach to mobility.  Envoy has other car sharing programs in operation in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Francisco and New York.  Envoy uses the Fiat 500e, Nissan Leaf, and Tesla vehicles in these other deployments as well.  For VW, it is a clever way to get its vehicles into the market while getting credit as part of the settlement.

For more details on how the program will work, go here.

Thomas Hall

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gary Simon is the Chair of CleanStarts Board. A seasoned energy executive and entrepreneur with 45 years of experience in business, government, and non-profits.

Get Ready For CalSEED

Get Ready For CalSEED

Want some seed to prove out your idea?  Well, CalSEED is back with their annual grant program to get ideas of the ground. Grants are a good source of such money because you surrender no ownership and you don’t need to pay the money back.  CalSEED is focused on clean energy startups and  is the easiest grant you could apply for. It is open for you to apply on March 1st.  But hurry, applications close on March 11th.

CalSEED is a CEC-funded program run by the California CleanEnergy Fund (CalCEF) to help entrepreneurs with budding ideas get their seed money.  The first round of the Grant is for 150K. Winners of the initial grant funds are then entered into a special CleanTech Open business plan competition for CalSEED, where they will receive mentoring and support in building a business. Winners of the CTO competition could receive an additional $600K in grant funding.

Past winners from Sacramento are Enerdapt and Lucent Optics.

It is important you are ready with your idea.  Check it out

Thomas Hall

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Thomas is the Executive Director of CleanStart. Thomas has a strong background in supporting small businesses, leadership, financial management and is proficient in working with nonprofits. He has a BS in Finance and a BA in Economics from California State University, Chico. Thomas has a passion for sustainability and a commitment to supporting non-profits in the region.

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