New electric vehicle lobby ZETA formed in the USA
In the USA, a lobby organisation has been founded to advocate that only purely electric vehicles should be sold nationwide from 2030 onwards. There are 28 founding members of the Zero Emission Transportation Association (ZETA), including Tesla.
Among the other best-known members are Lucid Motors, Uber, Siemens, ABB, Rivian, Arrival and large charging infrastructure providers such as ChargePoint, EVBox, Evgo and Enel X. As a lobbying organisation, ZETA aims to promote incentives to accelerate the sale of electric vehicles and the phasing out of internal combustion vehicles. The alliance also advocates stricter emission and performance limits.
The new organisation says that it is “advocating for 100% of vehicles sold by 2030 to be electric vehicles (EVs),” with the reasoning that “Achieving this goal will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, secure American global EV manufacturing leadership, dramatically improve public health, and significantly reduce carbon pollution.”
ZETA aims to lobby in the pursuit of the following stated goals: outcome-driven consumer EV incentives; emissions /performance standards enabling full electrification by 2030; infrastructure investments; domestic manufacturing; and federal leadership and cooperation with sub-national entities.
The out-going (eventually) Trump administration in the White House is notoriously opposed to new tax credits for electric vehicles and outspoken in his support for the continued use of fossil fuels. President-elect Joe Biden, on the other hand, wants to create new incentives, including new purchase premiums for electric vehicles. Biden also plans a large-scale expansion of the charging infrastructure. Reuters quotes the president-elect as saying: “We can own the electric vehicle market — building 550,000 charging stations — and creating over a million good jobs here at home — with the federal government investing more in clean energy research.” The new Zero-Emission Transportation Association also calls for “strong federal investment in the charging infrastructure.”
Joe Britton, Executive Director of ZETA, said: “For the first time in a generation, transportation is the leading emitter of US carbon emissions. By embracing EVs, federal policymakers can help drive innovation, create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and improve air quality and public health.” Last year, car manufacturers in the United States sold 326,000 electric cars, which corresponds to about two per cent of the total market. Tesla alone accounted for 60 per cent of these electric vehicle sales.
In September this year, California led the way with plans to ban the sale of new fossil-fuelled cars and trucks starting 2035. The state with the largest economy and home to Tesla also stipulated more stringent emissions targets than the far weaker targets by the now-outgoing President Trump. California’s more stringent emissions targets were promptly adopted by several other states. According to Reuters, California accounts for about 11% of all US vehicle sales.
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