- By CALSTART, Benjamin Mandel, Bill Van Amburg, Dan Welch

Policymakers, manufacturers, and end users have experimented with a number of policy tools to promote first clean and now primarily zero-emission vehicle adoption. Expandingly, states and regions have adopted a now well-proven policy tool to efficiently deploy zero-emission commercial vehicles—and now infrastructure—faster using an innovative and flexible point-of-sale incentive: the voucher incentive program (VIP). The VIP tool has proven highly effective in reducing the risk to faster fleet adoption of zero emission and other clean vehicles. By directly reducing the cost at the time of purchase, this style of incentive changes purchase decisions for commercial vehicle operators. VIP programs also leverage meaningful co-investment funds of as much as 3-to-1 that not only expand the impact of the public investment dollars but can drive a growing, clean tech economy (HVIP, n.d.).