In Brief:
Four percent of Americans own an electric vehicle. That’s twice as many as in 2021, but the pace needs to pick up to meet state and federal adoption goals. A bipartisan group of 350 mayors hopes to lead by example, committing to collectively electrify at least half of their fleets by 2030 and increase EV chargers by at least 500 percent by 2035.
They are members of Climate Mayors, a peer-to-peer network of city leaders in 48 states working together to address climate challenges. The majority are Democrats, but the group also includes Republicans. The announcement is meant to be a market signal to American makers of cars and light-duty trucks.
City fleet managers are adopting EVs at a faster pace than the general public. That is being driven by climate action plans and the state and federal grants and incentives that come with them. Electric fleet vehicles tend to be branded as such. Their presence in a community can be both a signal of civic responsibility and a marketing strategy.
A move away from vehicles with internal combustion engines is also a matter of survival for jurisdictions already feeling the consequences of fossil fuel emissions.
Emissions and Sunlight
John Giles, the mayor of Mesa, Ariz., is one of the 350 Climate Mayors backing the fleet and charger initiative. Maricopa County, where his city is situated, is an ozone nonattainment area, meaning ozone levels exceed national ambient air quality safety standards. In the last two weeks, he says, the U.S. EPA upgraded its status to “serious.”
Bad air is the biggest environmental risk to health. High levels of ozone can cause breathing problems, damage airways and lungs and lead to serious chronic lung diseases. Children, older adults and healthy adults who are active outdoors are at heightened risk.
“The recipe for ozone is vehicle emissions and sunlight,” Giles says. “We’ve got a lot of sunlight, so we need to be aggressive in terms of addressing vehicle emissions.”
Giles has a head start on expanding charging infrastructure thanks to a $12 million grant from the Department of Transportation, awarded in early 2024. The city should be able to increase charging stations by 40 percent with these funds, says Giles. This will be a step toward keeping ahead of an anticipated 1,000 percent growth in the number of EVs in Mesa between now and 2030. The city has made light-duty vehicles the first priority for fleet transformation. It has acquired about 70 Ford Lightning trucks and is looking for more.
In some ways, what’s happening in and around Mesa embodies the best hopes for a transition to EVs. The Phoenix-Mesa region is attracting companies that manufacture components of the EV supply chain, from batteries and vehicle seats to computer chips. These companies are big contributors to the local economy, and local leaders would welcome more of them.
Mesa is one of the only cities in Arizona with a municipal utility. The utility only serves about 30,000 customers in the downtown area but as charging infrastructure there expands, it will generate more city revenue.
Giles, a Republican mayor in a “notoriously conservative” city, expects climate issues to become less partisan as denial arguments are debunked and impacts mount. “If you’re not motivated by ‘save the planet’ arguments, there’s a compelling financial argument for doing this,” he says of EV adoption.
Maintenance isn’t the only thing that costs less; a recent analysis by the think tank Energy Innovation found it’s cheaper to fill an EV than a gas-powered vehicle in every state. Satya Rhodes-Conway, the Democratic mayor of Madison, Wis., and chair emerita of Climate Mayors, agrees that has bipartisan appeal.
One of Everything
Every mayor wants to cut expenses, says Rhodes-Conway. Opportunities to do this outweigh ideology. “I think you’re going to see a lot of city fleets adopting EVs just on the cost savings and the practicalities,” she says.
Madison’s fleet includes 900 light-duty vehicles. More than 100 are electric and another 150 are hybrid. The mayor drives a Nissan Leaf, the fire chief a Tesla. For a time, the street superintendent drove a Mustang Mach-E. “We have bought almost one of everything to try them out and see how they meet the needs of the different uses we have,” says Rhodes-Conway.
The city would have more than 100 EVs already but for supply chain issues, and the mayor has instructed the fleet division not to buy more gasoline vehicles of any type if an EV option is available. For the time being she expects some, such as police cruisers, to be hybrid. Madison is testing a fire truck prototype from Pierce, a manufacturer based in Wisconsin. Firefighters appreciate a break from diesel fumes, a health benefit that comes with the change.
EVs have both a city seal and an electric decal. This raises awareness of the program among residents and other municipalities in the region, Rhodes-Conway says. Madison fleet staff hold workshops with fleet managers from smaller cities and share their experience with electric vehicles. All can buy from a state contract, as Madison does, which means price savings. The city is working to help residents understand incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act that can help drive down the cost of their purchases.
Madison will open its first bus rapid transit line in a month. All the buses, about 60, will be electric. “That’s thanks to the Biden-Harris infrastructure law,” the mayor says.
The city’s utility, Madison Gas and Electric, built a charging hub on one of its main downtown streets, next door to a gas station. Madison passed an ordinance requiring newly constructed multifamily buildings, and others with parking garages, to have chargers or the conduits needed to install them in the future.
The charger requirement was pre-empted by the state Legislature, but the utility has helped the city install chargers in parking garages it owns and operates. Madison Gas and Electric is also mounting chargers on utility poles. The idea is to experiment with technology and placement, and to get a feel for demand.
Rhodes-Conway has one piece of advice for other mayors: planning for charging infrastructure and vehicle acquisition go hand-in-hand. “We got a bit ahead of our skis,” she says. “We’re caught up now, but we were buying electric vehicles left and right and we weren’t putting charging in at all the facilities where we needed it.”
