Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Chair Matt Walker]: Good afternoon. Here we are Tuesday, 03/10/2026 in house transportation. My apologies for running a couple of minutes early. Also my apologies to Andrea and Patrick for preempting you by a couple of minutes. Bill for Montruck and Bus Association gets the next couple of minutes on the agenda as an addition. You don't have to move. This one's going be unless you want to sit up there. Please go ahead and rise, identify yourself and let us know why you're here.

[Bill Smith (Montruck and Bus Association attorney)]: Hi, Bill Smith from Montruck and Bus Association. I'm their lawyer and and they're lawyers. So you may

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: have heard me say earlier

[Bill Smith (Montruck and Bus Association attorney)]: in the session that we'd love to invite you folks to watch to talk to the industry.

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: That is

[Unidentified attendee]: next Wednesday at Capital Laws and Buffet style

[Bill Smith (Montruck and Bus Association attorney)]: where you can talk to my board members and we're going to talk about things like before you get there we come up with mileage based user fees

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: and

[Chair Matt Walker]: paying for infrastructure fees and

[Bill Smith (Montruck and Bus Association attorney)]: all that fun stuff, how it impacts truck and bus industries and what we pay

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: now versus maybe where we're

[Bill Smith (Montruck and Bus Association attorney)]: going to be

[Chair Matt Walker]: ten years from now. I know it's hot on it and stuff like that. So just so you

[Bill Smith (Montruck and Bus Association attorney)]: know like the lead rigs are thinking of it too and where we end up on it might be more or less different than some of you but we'd have to be part of the discussion about our work. So I'll just have a discussion with those board members over to Cap Plaza next Wednesday and right now on the floor is 03:30.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah I'll just say for I think the last three, maybe four years, I've gone to it, I've learned a lot and it is helpful. Have good discussions with people who are running these trucks and doing it for a business. So if you haven't done, I'd encourage you to learn. Well, I learned a lot. I'll just tell

[Bill Smith (Montruck and Bus Association attorney)]: President is here in Hema Chittenden, if you watch Butler Bus, which handles has over 200 buses moving kids around the hospital system as well as

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: having charter bus. So, even though they can pull back by the hour.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: I thank you all for that. Okay, let's just say next one time. At the fourth time.

[Chair Matt Walker]: And Gabrielle, I'll make sure that our agenda has an opening for those BCs. Thank you very much and I appreciate And that'll put us right back on time and ahead of schedule, Helen usually. For the committee, we're gonna spend the next two weeks seeing where we're at with items on the T bill and piece. And somewhere on my agenda, I know that we are going to see Patrick a couple of times this week, I believe. Biospace user fee is going come up again, and we're going to go from there. But right now, Andrea has joined us, we are turning over to you. Thank you very much. Great. Thank you all.

[Andrea Wright (AOT Environmental Policy Manager)]: It looks like we're ready to go. For the record, my name is Andrea Wright. I'm the environmental policy manager at the Agency of Transportation.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: This is why I hijacked her.

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, AOT)]: Patrick Murphy, state policy director.

[Andrea Wright (AOT Environmental Policy Manager)]: And we're here to just provide some testimony on the annual report for the transportation incentive program that's required of us. We submitted the report at the January and was posted February 3 if anybody's looking for that report. And so basically what that means is that we'll provide an overview of the incentives that were issued in 2025. So again, just as a reminder, as amended by the 2024 T Bill, 2905 requires us to file an annual report. This is our second annual report for any year in which a clean incentive gets issued and it has specific requirements relating to the effectiveness of the programs, any changes that we can make for the funding.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: That's in statutes.

[Andrea Wright (AOT Environmental Policy Manager)]: Again, as some level setting here, there are five theme transportation programs that were established. I'm showing them here along with the funding that was authorized, so a total of $27,000,000 over the top. And you can see here the breakdown of the specific program authorizations as well as what was repurposed over time through subsequent authorizations through different T bills and also through some authority that was granted to the agency to flex funding between the programs. That's just an overview of all the different programs. To date, or at closing, because all the programs are now closed, B TRANS distributed over $23,500,000 for almost 7,000 incentives. If you recall, all the programs were income based or are income based with greater incentives available for those with lower income. Because of that, 79% of the funding has gone to lower income than MONRs. Again, this is just a quick summary of the total outcomes of the different programs, the number of incentives and the dollars issued per program. The new PEV, the Mileage Smart and the Replace Your Ride programs, closed in 2024. The e bike and electrified fleet programs had funding that extended into 2025. E bikes closed at the June and electrified fee at the August. So this presentation is just going to focus on those programs that issued incentives last year, the e bike and the electric fire fee. So starting off with e bikes, Vermont's program was the first statewide e bike program. Thought

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: you might begin into that. Where is the 3.5? You had 27 that was authorized and then issued a 23. You want to

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: know where the other one was?

[Chair Matt Walker]: I don't know if you were reading it. Was sort of waiting, but I had to see it on

[Andrea Wright (AOT Environmental Policy Manager)]: the slide. That's okay. Yeah, that is certainly the overview. We had about 15% that could go to administration of the programs.

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: Okay, that was fair. Okay, I forgot about that.

[Andrea Wright (AOT Environmental Policy Manager)]: Yeah, so starting off with the e bikes, here is just a reminder of the consumer eligibility, the bike eligibilities and the incentive amounts that were offered, as well as differing funding that was authorized in various T bills over time. Overall, 325,000 was authorized for the e bike program. During round one, the e bike incentives were available to both low income and moderate income In the second and third rounds, the funding was directed to only lower income Vermonters. Another change in the program for rounds two and three was that greater funding was made available to support the purchase of adaptive and e cargo bikes, given the more expensive nature of those bikes. So a couple of different changes that were made over time in those programs. Just a real brief summary. During the first six months before the program closed during 2025, the e bike incentive program distributed almost $26,000 through the issuance of 46 incentives, and that was through participation of 19 bike dealers throughout the state. The average incentive was for $60,000.500 and that accounted for 30% of the purchase price on average. Again, as was the case for round two and three, the changes that were implemented for low income in twenty twenty five, one hundred percent of the funds were issued to low income Vermonters. They purchased 27 standard e bikes and 19 cargo e bikes. Is that what? Is that your question? Oh, I didn't. No. I'm sorry. I just

[Bill Smith (Montruck and Bus Association attorney)]: wanted to interrupt.

[Andrea Wright (AOT Environmental Policy Manager)]: The program closes June 30. I

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: don't remember, but there was discussion a couple years ago about the incentive for eBites. You could get one on one and we're like, no, gone for shops, bike shops. All these bike shops are Vermont bike shops. And so everything was purchased from 19 bike shops. Is that old?

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, AOT)]: Yeah, so the first phase of the program allowed for both online purchases and in store in Vermont. And what we found was because of a particular company, vast majority and the price point of those bikes, the vast majority, about 79%, I believe, were being purchased online versus in brick and mortar stores here in Vermont. So the changes were made to say, no, let's focus on the local shops and provide them as vouchers rather than after the fact rebates. So you could still purchase bikes through a shop if they bought an online bike. So there were some pathways to still be able to get something that was the best fit. For example, the adaptive e bikes for people with disabilities. A shop might not necessarily carry a particular kind, but they'd be able to order it for them. So that was a big shift from the first phase of the program to the second, and meant that all of that funding that was invested stayed here within Vermont economy.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I will remember that. That's a good sign.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: Rep. Hainan Burke? Yeah, at that point, my local bookshop bike shops were really excited about, you know, how much business they got because of the. So downtown businesses in a challenging market. Really hooked you up.

[Andrea Wright (AOT Environmental Policy Manager)]: That's the 2025 summary. Overall, the e bike program issued almost $275,000 through six zero six incentives. The average incentive was four fifty three dollars accounting for 25% of the purchase price on average. And again, 33 bike shops participated overall in the program. The program originally allowed ninety days to redeem the incentive. We saw that in round 50% of the applicants did not purchase the e bike within that allotted time. So for ninety days, the money was kind of held up in that process. So those vouchers were canceled, they were returned, but again, those balances were held up. So there was sort of ebbs and flows in the program. It appeared like the money was not available. And so we made some changes in round three to change that to sixty days. And then even less time as the program near its end, went we to thirty days and then just said, you're happy until the end of the program where we were really close to wrapping things up. So that was pretty much the change that was made there. The program ran on a state fiscal year with funds made available in July. This chart shows a summary of the incentives issued over the life of the program. So it really experienced sort of a seasonal effect. It had to do with both when the funding was released and the yearly timing, just because they're e bikes. Typically, saw a surge in the applications after the release of the funding. In August and September, we had a pretty high upfront uptake on that.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: And

[Andrea Wright (AOT Environmental Policy Manager)]: then because those funds were kind of tied up, it would go down because it would appear that there was too much funding available. And once those funds were unspent funds were redeemed or sent back, we saw another surge in November timeframe. So we sort of see that same cycle in each year. So with the program's greater focus on the income level, you got to round one overall 80% of incentives and 88% of the funding was issued to lower income from honors. Again, 100% of round two and three going to lower income Vermonters. And then the program allowed for the purchase of 124 e bikes for moderate income Vermonters and four eighty two e bikes for lower income Vermonters. That's all I had on e bikes. Are any other questions on e bikes?

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Can you just sort of describe the adaptive e bikes, what those sort of entail? Yeah, so they're bikes that

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, AOT)]: are, they're not necessarily bikes. They might be a trike, they might have a third wheel or something. It depends on, there's a lot of different configurations. And so that's why it'd more of a special order, and why we wanted to make sure that the highest amount were available to that, to just provide that greater accessibility.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: Thanks. I'm just wondering if you have anecdotes or a snapshot of where these bikes are being used. I think I saw that they had to sign an affidavit saying that they're not just for recreation or commuting or what, but just trying to get a sense of where these bikes have been deployed statewide. I don't know if you can extrapolate emission savings, but just any kind of supportive information you might have.

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, AOT)]: So we did have, and we can provide this, but we had a map of where all the incentives were in the same way that we've had maps, driving electric bodies had maps of where EVs have been incentivized. So we can definitely get that. And I think in the first round, you could sort of see where maybe some of the bikes deposit was both for households with lower and moderate income, they tended to beat. There's a lot in sort of Central Vermont, and where the rail trails were. So there was a feeling, I think, that when it was broken down between the two England groups, one was almost the opposite of the other. So it had like about 65% of the moderate income folks might have purchased a bike otherwise or might have just purchased a bike that was lower in cost. Whereas it was very clear that the rebate was essential to those in lower income households for the exact opposite, maybe 60 plus percent, were saying, no, we wouldn't have been able to buy any sort of bike without there being a rebate available. So that's why we said in order to focus more on the transportation purpose of bikes and not just purely recreation, that we sort of narrowed that focus for low income households.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: Makes sense.

[Bill Smith (Montruck and Bus Association attorney)]: Representative Thompson? Thanks. I just wanted

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: to say anecdotally in Winooski, our local bike shop, really spoke incredibly highly of the program and had folks coming in who wouldn't have otherwise been able to purchase e bikes. And I was personally in there getting my bike tuned up when someone came in to pick up an e bike who wouldn't have been able to afford one and also didn't have access to a car. So it had been pretty limited in terms of her ability to get a raft. And because of that incentive, could access both transportation and this option.

[Andrea Wright (AOT Environmental Policy Manager)]: Great. So we'll move on to the Electrify Your Fleet program. That was authorized in the 2023 T bill. The authorization before $500,000 that was repurposed from Replace Your Ride, and then the program launched in November '3. Basically helped fleet owners fund the replacement of their internal combustion engine vehicles to cleaner transportation options. They could get an all electric vehicle, plug in hybrid electric motorcycles, electric bikes. We added the option to get ATVs, UTVs after the first few months of the program, and then also electric snowmobiles were an option for a different fleet. It was a first come, first served grant program with awards made in the form of reimbursement. So they could get up to $2,500 for each internal combustion engine that would replace a vehicle or avoided the purchase of another ICE vehicle with a maximum of 20 incentives for each entity, each fleet. And then there was an enhanced version where nonprofit mobility service organizations were eligible for up to five enhanced incentives of $5,000 each and then the remaining 15 at the $2,500 level. So during 2025, the Electrify Your Fleet program distributed just under $56,000 through the issuance of 20 incentives. The average incentive was about $2,800 which accounted for an average of a little over 8% of the purchase price of the vehicles. It allowed for the purchase of one e bike, two UTVs, three plug in hybrids, and 14 all electric vehicles during 2025. Then just so the different organization types and the number there of who took advantage and was able to replace some of their internal combustion engines through this program. I just want

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: to give a shout out to this program. My Town took advantage of it and bought a Rivian that they use for all sorts of things to do with wastewater and water and so and they also bought a couple of e bikes that are on loan through the library, but are also available for staff to use for commuting and for trips to take during the course of doing their work, obviously in the nicer weather. But anyway, it's a big hit. Definitely a range of entities, although not a big pool. Definitely a range of entities that took advantage. Some municipalities probably maxed

[Andrea Wright (AOT Environmental Policy Manager)]: out on what they could do, so they really, I guess, took advantage of the program. It was great. So despite the outreach that was done, both through Drive Electric Vermont on their website, stakeholder meetings and reaching out and consultations, environmental policy sustainability also did outreach, but the program really didn't receive the interest that we had hoped for and anticipated. Some applicants said that they felt like the amount was just not high enough to support the transition, just given where they were in their own budgets. Sometimes we found that we were going into a grant agreement with somebody and they just didn't have their electrification plan. They weren't quite ready to make the leap, and they didn't really understand which vehicles they were going to use this on. And then their grant expired and they weren't able to redeem it. We did well, I guess we also, like I said with UBM, did see, although there were some challenges with the program, some of the people really took great interest and advantage of it and were able to make quite a difference in their fleets and definitely had some positive input from their consultations through Black Electric Vermont that they had on the program and how to make those transitions. However, we were left with a balance, and then because of those challenges during the legislature last year, the T Bill authorized the transfer of up to $325,000 to continue a partnership with Drive Electric Vermont for the support of the electric vehicle transition in Vermont. So that's where the remaining funding went.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: In that program.

[Andrea Wright (AOT Environmental Policy Manager)]: Marking and outreach, a large part of the success over the life of the programs was due to the agreement that we have set up with Drive Health of Vermont and the work that they did on education and outreach, largely through their website. They had a real pretty comprehensive overhaul of the website. I don't know if it was last year or the end of last year. And a lot of consultations one on one with just everyday consumers, but also with fleet owners doing the stakeholder meetings that they do, quarterly stakeholder meetings, events. You'll hear from Dave later, but a lot of people appreciate the opportunity to be able to sit in and drive a vehicle before they purchase it, and without having the pressure of being at a dealership doing that is an advantage. Tabling and ride and drive events and different things like that were really helpful in helping the programs to success. And of course, AOT and other partners did some outreach with newsletters and mailings and different things as well. So really, overall outcomes of the programs. Again, to date, we've issued over $23,500,000 for almost 7,000 incentives. The programs have collectively enabled the purchase release of 4,200 electric vehicles, 1,600 plug in hybrids, five forty nine used hybrid electric vehicles, which is great to see an availability of used vehicles in the market. And these programs really just enhancing that with vehicle turnover. The ones that are new will become available in the used market, of course. Six zero nine electric e bikes. And then enable the retirement of four fifty one internal combustion engines through the Replace Your Ride program, which is quite an achievement, I would say, as well.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, I'll just note that replace your ride is one where you take an older internal combustion engine and convert or go to a newer. We had some good testimony about sort of the cost of driving and if you're lower income and you have an old car, you're gonna be having a lot of repairs, usually isn't that efficient. And so really it's an affordability. It can significantly help affordability by helping people transition out of those very costly modes of transportation.

[Andrea Wright (AOT Environmental Policy Manager)]: New boots. The new boots, another one. Yes, right, exactly. Yeah, I think the Replace Your Ride, if I remember correctly, the average age of the vehicle, the program said it had to be 10 years old. And I think the average age was somewhere in the 15 range. And the average miles on those vehicles was somewhere just under 160,000 miles. So definitely, I hope quite a few people get into something newer and more affordable, something that takes less out of their pockets. This is just showing that geographic distribution of incentives over the life of the programs really draws parallels from what we've heard from people, that people seeking to adopt and looking at incentives that they feel more confident in making the transition. People that don't have quite as far to travel, so there's still something to be said about range anxiety and the need for our continued deployment of EV infrastructure throughout the state and not just focusing on the more densely populated areas and building that confidence that people will be able to charge either at home or when they're on the road if they don't have access to at home charging. But again, showing our incentives benefited lower income Vermonters. 60% of the overall incentives went to the lower income bracket, and that incentives really made a transition and supported. The adoption of cleaner vehicles overall with 60% greater than 60% being all electric vehicles throughout the programs. And then I just wanted to include this. There's a couple of resources. One of them is a blog on the Drive Electric Vermont website that gives an overview and the outcomes of the different programs. And then we have this dashboard up on our website that really can help you dig into some of the data. If you want to understand the different program outcomes, the overall outcomes, you can dig in and see the distribution of you can move the scale of the time around to see year to year or whatever time frame you want to look at, what types of vehicles you can filter, and do a lot of different things with this dashboard.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So that's a good one on our website. Yes. I mean, it correct to say the majority of the data came through contracting with Drive Electric, that they provided that?

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: I have to

[Andrea Wright (AOT Environmental Policy Manager)]: ask David exactly, but it came a lot of it through our agreement and contract with the Center for Sustainable Energies, which did work with DEP. So

[Patrick Murphy (State Policy Director, AOT)]: a lot of our historical data before we entered into the Center for Sustainable Energy contract to come from Driving Electric for Long, because they supported the very low cost model that we had with all the utility partners who were helping to administer the program before. So a lot of that historical data for the new PV programs came from that, and then Capstone with the MINUS Smart program. And then as we moved to the contract with Center for Sustainable Energy, the EIC was subcontractor that supported some of the activities.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: Can you just remind me of the relationship between Drive Electric Vermont and Efficiency Vermont?

[Andrea Wright (AOT Environmental Policy Manager)]: We can.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Andrea, thank you very much.

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: Situated here. For the record, Dave Roberts. I'm a managing consultant at BIC, and I help coordinate the Dry Electric Map program. Happy to be here again. Fortunately, I don't have bifocals, so I have to take my glasses off to see the screen. So, again, Dave Roberts. I work at BIC. So BIC is a Winooski based nonprofit, and we operate efficiency Vermont under an order of appointment with the public utility commission in Vermont. And we also coordinate the drive electric from our program, which is separate, although there is some overlap. And I'll get into that in a little more detail. We also do work outside Vermont. So we run large scale energy efficiency programs in Washington DC, both the DC Sustainable Energy Utility and another program that works with municipal utilities across Ohio, Delaware, and a few other states called Efficiency Smart. And we do consulting work across the country on clean energy and energy efficiency. So today, here to just provide a little bit of context for our work at Drive Electric Vermont, tell you more about what we've been up to in the past year, talk about it, the efficiency Vermont EV programs that have been running for a few years now. If there's time, I have some more detail on market conditions that I thought might be helpful based on some of the conversations that I know have been happening so far in the session, and then next steps. So just to set the context a little bit, believe Jerry Duvall from the Energy Action Network was in earlier providing some updates on the resources they've developed. But just for context, driving an all electric vehicle in Vermont over its life as a significant emissions reduction compared to gasoline vehicle, even when you factor in the battery manufacturing where the electricity is coming from. EVs are so far, so there are still significant benefits to getting people producing vehicle miles traveled as a host of benefits. So there are good reasons to continue investing in walking, bicycling, public public transportation. But EVs, we think are part of the solution in terms of affordability and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And that is included EVs are included as strategies in the climate action plan, recently updated in 2025. There are kind of strategies included in that plan related to emission regulations for motor vehicles, EV purchase incentives, developing more public charging infrastructure, educational marketing work to make sure people are aware of what options are out there. And also thinking about the opportunities in the medium and heavy duty space, which is still fairly nascent but important consideration for the future. Vermont also has a state comprehensive energy plan that includes some similar EV related recommendations. And just a little bit of context on the affordability side, this is just looking at field costs and not looking at maintenance and purchase and all the other ingredients that might go into operating costs for somebody driving a vehicle in Vermont. But over the past five years, somebody driving an EV on a off peak rate could have saved about a little over $5,000 just on the fuel costs alone. And it's the equivalent right now if you're on an off peak rate of around a dollar a gallon gasoline. So as we see, gasoline has a history of volatility. And right now with everything that's happening in The Middle East, we're seeing prices increase substantially. Hard to know how long that will be the case, but for folks who are driving EVs, they're pretty well insulated from those types of price shocks because electricity is regulated fuel. Electricity prices do tend to go up over time, you don't have that same volatility and it tends to be a much gentler rate of increase in terms of the inflation pressure that's there. So significant opportunity for savings, somebody driving the needy. So as far as our Drive Electric Vermont work goes, we've been doing this work since 2012 partnership with the state of Vermont, with B TRAN as well as other state agencies, as

[Chair Matt Walker]: well

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: as other partners, electric utilities, other governmental organizations, non governmental organizations like the Sierra Club and others. So we view it as we have quarterly stakeholder meetings where we can get everybody sort of on the same page about what programs are currently available in the state, trade ideas on what's working, what isn't, and just sort of make sure that folks are well coordinated as we can be as this work moves forward. We also do consumer education outreach. So we talked a little bit about that in the prior presentation from B TRANZ about the work we did supporting the state incentive programs. We continue to do that work. We have supported the incentive programs when they were active. We have done auto dealer engagement. They're critical partials and getting more EVs on the road and keeping them on the road. So very important partnership with that community as well as supporting fleet transitions and charging planning and support. So last year I shared this slide, which we sort of characterize as carrot sticks and microphone megaphones. So we've got the carrots are the incentives, the sticks are the emission regulations, and the megaphone is sort of the marketing and outreach to make sure these programs are communicated to the general public, people are aware of what's out there. And that things have changed in the last year significantly. So we no longer have federal fuel economy requirements have been basically eliminated, the federal tax credits eliminated, the state of Vermont vehicle incentives are no longer available. Occurred in October 24 for consumers when the funds ran short. And the advanced clean cars regulations, the emission regulations, the sort of biggest stick that the state has been using to advance action in this realm. The enforcement's been paused, the authority of California and Vermont to sign on to those programs has been rescinded by Congress and is currently under a legal challenge, it's not looking great for those regulations to continue certainly in the way that they were set up a few years ago. So what we do still have, our electric utility programs continue. So there are electric utility incentives up to, in some cases, to the $5,700 from Burlington Electric Department. It's the highest incentive that's still on offer for consumer purchase. They still have automaker incentives and market price adjustments. On the medium and heavy duty side, there are still some opportunities. Certainly on the charging side, we've got some good things happening with what B TRANS is doing with the Navy Federal charging funds as well as the ACCP and GMP's charge for our program. Electric utilities do still have support for public and workplace point charging. And I'll talk a little bit more about what we've been doing in the the dealer realm, which has included some charging activities and the dealer supply chain development. On the private electric side, we do still have opportunities to market what's out there. And I'll provide a little more information on that. So we know that a lot of people are unsure about EVs still. The technology has been around for as long as we've been doing this work since 2012, but a lot of people haven't had much direct experience with an EV. So getting people to try one out or just experience one at an event has been, you can see a significant increase in their consideration of, okay, maybe this could work for me if I have a chance to go for a test drive and get behind the wheel. And we know that can just basically double interest in somebody's EV purchase consideration. So we've got a

[Chair Matt Walker]: lot of resources. Yes? Dave, on that consumers unaware of the EV technology 25% likely to is that a recent number, meaning in the last year? Where does that come from? And then I'm curious how it might compare to three or four or five years ago. What was the progress there, I guess? Or if it is progress, some people like this. But that number is about I'll put qualitative to it. How does it change over the last three to four years?

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: Yeah, so that number is about two years old, believe. So it's before the federal tax credits ended, but there have been, we don't have a lot of Vermont specific survey data on this front right now. We did efficiency Vermont, did some market research in 2021, which got into detail on this. But we know from sort of national numbers and just where the market is at, people are, price matters and the last of those incentives has impacted the market. And just the general sort of trends away from federal policy supporting in transportation have created some headwinds. But that said, we also know that once people get into an EV, they're highly likely to get another one, so very high satisfaction once they've had the opportunity to own or lease one. And it might make sense, I can share. So here's our website monthly visitors, just to kind of give you a sense of how things have fluctuated over the past few years. So you can see going back to 2012, almost no traffic and then ramping up significantly after some of the COVID shutdowns in 2020. 2022 and 2023, we had some dedicated marketing campaigns that were funded by efficiency of our mouth that really drove a lot of traffic to the website. And then over the 2025 time span, we sort of see a ramp up in advance of the federal tax credits going away in September. And things have definitely settled after that. I think most people who were thinking about an EV or sort of in the market pull forward a purchase if they could. Winter And is typically not a great season for my car sales to begin with. So we're definitely seeing lower numbers. I would think the macro from the auto dealer association showed some of the monthly statistics that they've collected. It's hard to say when that will recover. It's gonna depend on a number of factors. Certainly, if gasoline prices continue going up at the rate they are, that unfortunate as that is, that can be helpful for for getting people more interested in fuel efficient vehicles. So is that in context?

[Chair Matt Walker]: I was curious how recent public opinion is probably pretty fluid, spiking. And then the incentives went on. It just kind of, do we know what the public is? I guess that's a big question to everybody. How do you know what the public's thinking about EVs at any particular given point at this point? And is it how much it was a financial decision for them versus a philosophy decision versus, we're not sure where it's going to head.

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: Yeah, one of the unfortunate things is all the news about the federal incentives going away is people may not realize in Vermont, we do still have incentives through the utilities. That is a message that we're trying to convey. We do have on our website, which was updated about a year ago significantly. And we have a tool that people can look up their utilities specifically, see what's on offer for both the vehicle incentives as well as charging incentives for home charging, which is another area that a lot of people can benefit from.

[Bill Smith (Montruck and Bus Association attorney)]: Do remember?

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: Yeah, I'm just curious, what are your sources of funding?

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: So over time we've tried to do a variety of things. So back in 2012, EIC itself is a nonprofit, was investing in doing some of this work. We've had funding from private foundations, which has been on again, off again. The John Burke Fund, which was a Boston based private foundation was really helpful. They've funded a lot of clean energy work in New England and spent down their endowment a couple of years ago. So they're no longer doing any grant making, unfortunately. We've gotten a bit of money from the Vermont Community Foundation and we've gotten money through obviously the state of Vermont, some different state pools of money. Originally, public service department had some funding, More recently, it's been through VTrans, some different sources over the years. The state funding has really been sort of the highest amount and most helpful, I would say, because it's been fairly steady. So it's allowed us to continue our programs. And then we do have kind of separate from our drive more where my BEIC have, we have done some contract work for others. So for example, we've worked with the city of Winooski to develop a public charging plan that they had some funding to do and things of that sort. So our technical assistance program, we have a call center, people can call in, email, chat. So we've answered last year, we had about 150 inquiries through that channel that we responded to on the business fleet side, sort of business and municipal side. We work with about 25 businesses in the last year. We've also been supporting multi unit residential housing properties with what are some of the considerations for charging and providing some sort of background technical support for the state grant program that's been operating. Been working closely with Etrans on providing some support for their NEVI actions that are ongoing, including just in the last week, helping develop a survey tool that we're asking potential host site properties who might be willing to cite a charter on a property to raise their hand and fill out a survey to let us know and in turn be trans can work with their contractor network who are gonna be actually installing those charging stations because there have been some challenges finding viable host sites in some of the particularly more rural parts of the state. And also work with ACCV on analyzing some of their charging usage and no problem when both from ACCV was in earlier and provided some of that information. On the technical assistance side, I just wanna highlight this is Neighborhood Connections in Londonderry. They've got two electric vehicles in their fleet that we help them go through the process to to purchase and ask them to provide a little bit of information how it's been working for them. They're saying they're working well. And because they're driving a lot of miles with their community transportation program, their projected savings are $24,000 in fuel savings this year because they do so much driving on those vehicles. Similarly, we work with University of London Health Network to help them figure out some of the charging opportunities for their various properties and wanted to share some of that feedback. So I provided a letter along with this slide testimony asking for additional funding for next year. I know it's very tight and we all have a lot of challenges with funding right now. So I appreciate this is not an easy ask for you, but we would like to continue this work. We think it's important and doing good things for the state. So we're asking again for up to 325,000. I'm not quite sure where that would land, but we basically ended up at about 275,000 in additional funds for what came through out of the legislative process last year. So we're no. We think we have essentially, that will carry us through our current sort of standard level of effort to the September or so. And if we don't have additional funding, then we would obviously need to curtail our work in some ways. So

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: I didn't, yes. I wasn't sure that I heard. You said that if you got this some amount of money from the state that would carry you through just in September?

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: No. The money that we have now from last session should take us through around September as our current forecast. So if we don't have additional funds, then that's when we would likely need to start talking back.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: Thank you.

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: I do have a few updates on the Efficiency Vermont side. I'll try to go through these fairly quickly, but I'm happy to follow-up or pause if there are questions. Essentially, Efficiency Vermont as a regulated energy efficiency utility is most interested in producing electric energy use. So EVs haven't traditionally been part of their mandate because even though they're more efficient, they're increasing electric use. So there have been some legislative pilot programs that started in 2020, most recently extended in 2023 that have allowed Efficiency Vermont to work in the programs where we're adding electric vehicles and electric heating sort of to the work that they're doing. That authorization is sunsetting in December. So they are not currently planning to continue the work as it's been after that point, although they are starting to look at more efficient electric vehicles as an opportunity. So just like you have Energy Star washing machines and things like that, you know, thinking about the a similar opportunity in the electric vehicle realm where they may be able to support more efficient electric use in EVs. And the work that they have been doing is an EV dealer program. So it's been supporting dealers making investments in service infrastructure, charging infrastructure. So if they need a new battery lift, for example, to to maintain an electric vehicle, efficiency, Vermont can provide funding support for that. In the last year or two, we've been focusing on used car dealers, knowing that there are some rental opportunities. And when I say used car dealers, I mean dealers who don't sell new cars. So they're non franchise, not even so a lot of new car dealers sell used cars in Vermont, but we're talking about the smaller used car network across the state. So currently, there's five of them participating in this efficiency from our program. And there's a variety of different support mechanisms that they can get through that work. That includes training, sales incentives. So what we call sometimes midstream sales incentives that doesn't go to the consumer, it's going into the dealership to support their EV sales, the EV readiness projects, so doing some charging installations. So this is a fast charger that was installed at a Saint Jay Ford dealer, I believe, with support from the efficiency Vermont program. So it supported over 3,400 sales over the the life of the program so far. They've also been working on a consumer awareness campaign, which is essentially funded by Efficiency Vermont, but driving traffic to the Drive Electric website. So you can see some of the stats here that are that are going back to the slide I shared with the website traffic, 134% increase over the course of the campaign that operated through last September. And so that is the update on Drive Electric and Efficiency Vermont work. I have a few slides on sort of market conditions just as despite what might be happening at the federal level in The United States globally, EVs are still expected to continue to grow significantly. Gas and diesel vehicle sales peaked in 2017, so it's actually that far back. This is China, Europe, other places around the world supporting vehicle electrification. A lot of this is being supported by the drop in battery prices. So we've seen over time batteries go from $1,500 per kilowatt hour and typically EVs might have a 70 kilowatt hour battery or so, so down to a $100 at roughly a kilowatt hour. So this is what's really helping put downward pressure on some of the EV models moving forward. We do have EV lease deals remaining for some models, and this is very manufacturer specific and deals can vary from month to month, but you can lease the Chevy Equinox for about $260 a month currently. It's like a few thousand down, which you might be able to get covered by an electric utility incentive if you qualify for one. We're seeing some price drops after the federal tax credit ended. Hyundai dropped the price of their IONIQ five all electric by about $7,000 So not every automaker is doing that and some like Ford have discontinued some of those expensive models that hadn't been selling well like that one fifty lightning pickup truck. They are coming out with a more affordable pickup truck. And I'd say next year, it'll be more like in the $30,000 range. And the the larger pickup truck, like a Lightning, is supposed to come back in a couple of years with a range extending gasoline engine. So making a little more practical for people who are doing towing or longer trips, things like that. The tariffs have impacted some availability, trade tariffs at the federal level, creating some challenges for automakers who aren't always producing in The United States. So we're seeing some availability shifts. So Hyundai, for example, is discontinued in The United States, which is their all electric sedan because that isn't made in The US the way that Dynamic Fives are made in Flintoclass, Georgia. So seeing a lot of shifts, but at the same time, you know, we're expecting about 20 new EV models this year, including a couple from Subaru and Toyota that I just wanna highlight knowing that a lot of our modders, other Subarus. There has been the Solterra for a few years, and these are all in partnership with Toyota Technologies. But the Trailseeker is basically gonna be like an electric Outback and that's coming to market next month is the plan. And base price around $40,000 and with the average price of a new vehicle running around $50,000 these days, I mean, it's not exactly as affordable as we'd like it to be, but it's certainly competitive with a lot of gasoline that are out there. And we are seeing more used EV availability. So, you know, represent Corcoran was mentioning this before today's time. You know, if you can get a good deal on a used EV, that's really the the cheapest best option. And we do have resources on our website that can help steer people to these. And we're gonna see a lot more EVs coming off lease because of the way the federal tax credit work for vehicles that weren't made in North America over the last couple of years when the tax credit was available, there's essentially a leasing loophole. Companies could still get a tax credit through a lease even if it wasn't gonna qualify in a purchase. So that means over the next two or three years, we'll see how those vehicles coming in off lease and really building support for a used EV market. That EV used market you're saying is another year away, you think? It's this year, they're saying, is when things are really gonna pick up because it was about two and a half years ago that the leasing loophole sort of came into play and typically people are on two and three year leases.

[Chair Matt Walker]: And you said the EVs worldwide, even if there is a slowdown in The United States, I wasn't sure if I was clear, Was that activity in more Europe, South America, Asia? Did you mention a particular spot? I mentioned China

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: because they have a huge program, but Europe as well, and Norway is that

[Chair Matt Walker]: particular area more than other areas, I guess, is

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: carrying worldwide market? China. Using them in China. Yes. But they are also selling them abroad now, which is more and more. They're building factories abroad as well, Chinese companies. And so this is an area where it's really, to my mind, unfortunate that some of The US disinvestment is happening because it's gonna put US automakers at a competitive disadvantage over the next couple of years if they're not keeping up globally with what's happening in this industry.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Represent Keyser.

[Rep. Chris Keyser (Member)]: It's kinda funny we mentioned China with all their coal fired electric plants, so that's kinda sound right. But after all these years that we've had incentives on electric cars, it's not kind of time to let it stand on its own. It's been quite a few years. I don't think of anything that we've ever propped up for so long that should be able to stand on its own, I

[Chair Matt Walker]: think, these days. Well, I mean, for better

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: or worse, it essentially is. I mean, there's no state money. The utility incentives are in some cases, they essentially pay for themselves because utilities benefit from having more electric load. So as long as it's happening off peak, the charging's happening off peak, EVs can help put downward pressure on everyone's electric vehicle. People aren't driving EVs can benefit. And so that's one reason that utilities in Vermont are continuing

[Rep. Chris Keyser (Member)]: to support them. I do notice my electric rates go up like crazy. So I'm assuming that we all got a little investment in those incentives if we're, if we pay our electric bills. So It's it's part of

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: the state's renewable energy standard program. So which, you know, is obviously is the bugger of legislators.

[Rep. Chris Keyser (Member)]: People that can't afford their electric bill.

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: And there are programs to to help folks out with that. And I know it's I mean, I'm not discounting that that's a concern. Certainly is. But I'm saying that EVs can actually help put downward pressure on rates and that is established. I haven't seen it.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Whatever, we're good. I'm not sure how many more slides you have. I have few other questions as you get to this.

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: Just a handful more, but this isn't the total registrations. This is the quarterly increase in registrations. So I think it gives you a little better picture of how things have been shifting over the past couple of years with the end of the state incentives and then the end of the federal incentives tagged here. Overall, still seeing more growth, but you know, relative to around 500,000 on road vehicles in Vermont, you know, EVs are still fairly small percentage of the overall fleet. Public charging, it's growing. One key point I wanted to make on this is excellent news that the number of ports per location is increasing. So when you go to a fast charger in Vermont, it used to be maybe there'd only be one port or two if you were lucky. And Tesla has always offered larger number of ports, but we're seeing that number creeping up. It's for non Tesla chargers in Vermont as of this January. It was 2.3 fast charging ports for fast charging location. We do expect that will continue to grow as progress continues to be made. And this is just my summing up slide. Certainly the market's adjusting. When we get back to those previous sales levels is dependent on many factors. And don't My thinking about state incentives at least is don't do it unless you have a good amount of money to invest. I mean, the burn rate on the state incentive programs in the last sort of two months was about $2,000,000 for the new PEV and replace your ride and mileage mark program. So there's no point getting everybody all up to speed on the program that's gonna stop in two or three months. It's a frustrating experience for consumers who might be trying to time a purchase. Somebody buying a vehicle, it's not always when you hope it's gonna be. It's sort of something happens with your car and you have to make a purchase decision quickly. So my feeling is, obviously, if you have the resources at some point to resume those programs and focus on continue to focus on low and moderate income purchasers, then that could be helpful. But in the absence of that, you may want to invest in other ways, charging infrastructure I'm biased, obviously I think the work that we're doing is also helpful. And just a key point here is from the JD Power. And this is recent, this is February year. They do JD Power does a lot of survey research of vehicle purchasers. And, know, basically, almost everybody that they surveyed driving an EV, 96% said they would consider purchasing or leasing another EV for their vehicles. So I sort of view it as saving for retirement or compound interest. If you get the more that you can do, the sooner, the better it is for the long term because if we're not able to see the market return to previous sales levels for a number of years, then that's just gonna make it that much harder to hit some of the long term goals that State has. So with that, I'm happy to take any other questions or follow-up as needed. Yeah. Given your

[Chair Matt Walker]: organization, working as your own life besides you, in addition to yourself, what what would we be looking at for an organization? We

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: don't have a dedicated staff and even I'm not 100% on Drive Electric for my work. So we have staff who can sort of come in and bill on an hourly basis. We invoice the trans monthly for the work we do. So we don't get sort of the money upfront as a grant, but something that we're reimbursed for monthly based on the work that we're actually doing. And so we have a number of staff on our team who are working on the sort of business and fleet consulting side. We've got our call center staff who are also staffed in the call center for efficiency Vermont. So we only bill for the handful of hours a week or so that they're supporting, but also have the benefits of the infrastructure in place to support that work. And we have also on the efficiency Vermont team, their community outreach team have been staffing events for a number of years, so they can also provide live electric front resources when they're at events. So we have, I guess all and we have a web team that's developing the website. We do that in house. So all told, we probably have about 50 or 60 staff who are billing two hour drive electric from out work at one time or another, but a few of them are doing more than 50% of their time, I'd say.

[Chair Matt Walker]: On the slide, had a whole list of activities that you're doing, and you had mentioned that we've some funding perhaps that runs out in September, perhaps it runs out in December and other work curtailing activities. What would that look like? What are some of the things that would have to go further?

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: Or does that cross the bridge when you come to I know, we're thinking about it. I mean, we know funding is tight and if no funding is forthcoming this session, then we might work proactively with Etrans to think about the things we start doing less of sooner to extend the runway for the work. I think some of the heavier lift types of things that we do is working directly with businesses and fleets because that can be a fairly significant level of effort, many hours, potentially site visits going out to check out what's happening at the property and where charging might work and things like that. That's the sort of thing we might need to rethink. I think ideally we continue investing in the website to keep it current, but if we don't have resources to do that, then we might be more strategic and just make sure that it's operating and does best we can with whatever limited resources are available.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Is that an ongoing dialogue with the agency at this point?

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: I'd say so. Regent Powell.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So I've talked to a couple of people, including ACCD, who sort of mentioned that Drive Electric tends to be the holder of the data. They're the place if you wanna find out something, know, what you're saying dealers, number of dealers where this, but it tends to be a central.

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: We try to serve that function, yes. And we have worked with ACCD. We did a significant effort to analyze the charting data that they had from grantees. So that's certainly something that we may not be able to do without additional funding moving forward.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Representative White.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: Thank you for this. Have two questions. One is just following up on Chair Walker's question. So it sounds like Drive Electric is a bit of a subset of Efficiency Vermont. I would

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: say a sister rather than sister.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: Can you remind me, so Efficiency Vermon was established in 2012, is that right?

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: No. Sooner or much earlier, yeah. They've been around, I'm sorry, have I could follow-up.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: I'm just trying to get a general sense. How many people are at Efficiency Vermont in its entirety? Just like a rough

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Around 200. Around 200.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: And my second question is specific to Drive Electric's work, working with AOT and ACCD and other companies in terms of EV charging. I always feel like we need more Level three chargers, I think it's probably known, but I also see many different variations of level three chargers throughout the state. My question to you is, does that seem to be working from your point of view? I look at New York State, and I think it's Electrified America. They have all these Electrified Americans. You need the app, and then you know what it is, and where they are, how they work. It's very different here in Vermont, so I'm just curious your feeling on that.

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: I would say it's getting better. It's certainly, there's still room for improvement and it is a pain point for a lot of EV drivers having the different apps. And even in New York, I mean, Electrify America has a lot of locations, but there are still a lot of other charging networks active there. So I think it's getting better. I can say that fairly with some confidences. Automakers are standardizing on the Tesla, the next charging port and Tesla has opened most, but not all of their fast charging locations to non Tesla drivers. It's just making it a lot more reliable, a lot easier for EV drivers doing those long distance trips. I mean, fortunately, most Vermonters who are driving EVs, it's not so much the Vermont charging that they're looking for. It's the New York, the New Hampshire, Massachusetts because with the 200, 300 mile range EV, you're not necessarily needing to charge in state too often. But it is certainly an area that needs more improvement. It's getting better, but it needs more improvement. And

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: do you feel like it would make sense to have the call streamlined, like a couple of vendors that you all recommend that you know are fairly fail safe?

[Dave Roberts (Drive Electric Vermont / VEIC)]: It's tough to pick favorites in that business right now. It's in a lot of upheaval, as a lot of EV related industries are. So like Blink is the company that the state has contracted with to spend some of the Volkswagen diesel settlement funds on EV charging and they're having some financial struggles. I would say, if we're aware of any critical issues where a vendor is not performing, we would certainly let the state know and we do some monitoring of like shares of resource that a lot of EV drivers use to check the status of a target level two or fast charger. And if we see a lot of indications that the location isn't working as it should be, then we can let particularly if it's state funded, then we can let folks know. But for privately funded, which is some, not all, but some of the locations we want, we don't really have a way to pick favorites there. It's up to the market to figure that out, and, hopefully, we'll continue to improve.

[Chair Matt Walker]: Okay. We we are a little bit over, and I apologize for that. But we will take our break now and be