By Jon Ullman
Kent Bullard directs me to the heavy water jugs that will guarantee the Sierra Club tent won’t fly away and crash into any of the 87 electric cars at the Ventura Harbor Drive Electric Show.
Bullard, transportation chair of our Santa Barbara-Ventura Chapter, and fellow EV Advocate Brian Pletcher have lugged plenty of water jugs, tables and chairs during the annual September Drive Electric week and Earth Day EV show driving their own EVs. Their mission to drive as many people as possible to ditch their internal combustion engines.
Bullard, who lives in Ventura and Pletcher from Thousand Oaks also brought the booth equipment plus lights to an EV event at outdoor night market in Santa Maria last week.
Gasoline prices in California have surged to $6.20 a gallon, the cheapest price Gas Buddy can find.
Meanwhile the Inflation Reduction Act all but guarantees there will be burst of electric cars, buses and
charging stations next year. The law opens $7,500 federal tax rebates for more vehicles and will spur a wellspring of fast chargers along highways with separate funding from the IRA.
Nonetheless, EV supply is tight so prices remain high. But that dam could burst any second. Until that happens, the EV show carries on. Kent Bullard, Brian Pletcher and the Sierra Club securely fastened Sierra Club tent will be at the Thousand Oaks EV event on October 16.
Also -- see our earlier blog on how to save on an electric car!
Electric bus surge
Federal and state funds are also bringing a surge in all-electric municipal buses to our area. Two transit districts stand out: Santa Barbara Metropolitan Transit District (MTD) and Santa Maria Regional Transit (SMRT). Santa Barbara has 14 all-electric buses now with nine on order out of a 114-bus fleet, which has committed to be 100% electric by 2030.
But Santa Maria is moving like lightning. It has two all-electric buses, 17 more on order and expects its smaller bus fleet to be 100% electric in just a couple of years.
The Guadalupe Flyer bus, which connects its Surf liner-served Amtrak station to downtown Santa Maria has purchased its own 100% electric bus too.
Meanwhile, the Clean Air Express 75-mile commuter service from Santa Maria to Santa Barbara took possession of its first all-electric bus earlier this year, powered entirely from solar panels in Goleta.
The situation in Ventura County is different. The county’s largest bus fleet, Gold Coast Transit -- which runs exclusively natural gas buses -- says it has no immediate plans to purchase electric-charged battery buses. It says it may switch to hydrogen in the future.
Both Santa Barbara and Ventura counties have more than a dozen other regional, municipal and private bus services, and we will give you system-by-system tally of their all-electric bus funding applications, those in hand and how many on order in the next issue.
