California
Gov. Jerry Brown signed several bills on Sunday intended to boost his state's electric car market, including a bill requiring commercial and residential property owners to approve installation of an electric vehicle charging station by renters.
Currently, California accounts for 40 percent of the nation's plug-in electric vehicle sales.
Brown, who will deliver an address today at the United Nations Climate Change summit, has focused on building the California's electric vehicle market and signed an executive order in 2012 establishing a target of 1.5 million zero-emission cars on the road by 2025, according to a press release from the governor's office.
"California has more electric vehicles on its roads than anywhere else, helping us fight pollution in our state and this legislation will further that effort," Jim Evans, a spokesman for Brown, told
The Los Angeles Times.
Another measure to create the Charge Ahead California Initiative, which would provide incentives to increase the availability of zero emission vehicles in low-income communities.
The initiative would allow low-income residents to obtain clean-vehicle rebates if they agreed to turn in older cars that pollute more.
In 2013, the average selling price of an electric car was $32,086, while the median income for American families was $46,700, according to
Autoblog.com.
In addition to the bills signed on Sunday, Brown approved a measure that will permit local governments to impose a vehicle registration surcharge as a way to finance bike lanes and trails, according to
The Associated Press.
Brown recently lost out to Nevada in a bidding war to lure Tesla Motors to build a new battery plant in the state, a development which he said actually was a benefit to California.
"Nevada's tax breaks are California's benefit if we can get to our million electric cars. And the cars come off the factory line right there in Fremont, and they'll keep coming as long as that Nevada plant actually gets built and they can put out batteries significantly cheaper than they do today," Brown said, according to
The Fresno Bee.
His failure to land the contract is an issue which has been seized upon by Neel Kashkari, Brown's Republican opponent, in a recent gubernatorial debate, reports
Capital Public Radio.
Kashkari said Tesla was one more business which is leaving the state, but Brown defended his performance insisting that "Tesla wanted a massive cash up-front payment that I don't think would be fair to the taxpayers of California."
Lawmakers of both parties decided against granting Tesla tax incentives to build its factory in California. Tesla is based in Palo Alto, California and has a factory in Fremont.
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