The Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) recently announced the awardees of their $5 million Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) consumer awareness grants, and RCRC was on a winning team. In addition to awardee Valley Clean Air Now, VELOZ will be receiving $2.5 million to expand their Electric For All campaign in hard-to-reach areas. During the past several months of RCRC’s ZEV infrastructure strategy development, RCRC has fostered a partnership with VELOZ and, as a result, will be a “sub-awardee” of these grant funds to assist its 38 member counties with in-depth information to support the roll out of ZEV infrastructure. Of the nearly 80,000 public charging stations in California, RCRC’s rural counties only have roughly 4,500 public charging opportunities, about 5.5%, in an area that covers close to two-thirds of the state geographically. RCRC’s combined efforts with VELOZ will be another step toward solving that infrastructure imbalance so ZEVs can be a viable transportation solution in rural and remote communities to better serve their residents, businesses, and visitors.
