Great results from first-ever group buy for EVs

Last year, we expanded our group solar purchase program to do a first-in-the-country group purchase of EVs. The results?  The program, offered in two counties in Colorado, increased EV sales by 4X per month, and in the last quarter of 2015, comprised 5% of national sales of Nissan Leafs. Not too shabby!

Check out the case study, here (pdf)

Combining EVs and solar are like peanut butter and jelly — good on their own, and better together.  This op-ed by Vote Solar’s co-founder David Hochschild and CAISO Boardmember Mark Ferron makes the case well.  We know how to green the grid, but greening liquid fuels used for transportation is much harder.  If we electrify transportation, and use renewables to provide that electricity, we are running on sunshine.  At the same time, transitioning to EVs will add millions of large batteries to the grid, and with the right policies, these can be very helpful in integrating increasingly large amounts of variable renewables into the grid.

If you want to replicate this program on your own — which we encourage! — SWEEP and the Colorado Energy Office prepared a handbook (pdf). Go forth and let the world prosper.