It’s never been easier, more affordable, more important, or more exciting to make the switch to a fully electric vehicle. Consumers have more options than ever before, prices are reaching parity with fossil-fueled alternatives, and there are attractive financial incentives.
Watch the video and/or download the slides!
What is holding people back? What is the true state of the marketplace, charging options, vehicle choices, cost, and other considerations? And, as climate advocates, what can we do to inform and influence our friends, neighbors, and co-coworkers to make this critical transition?
To answer these questions, the Climate Reality Bay Area (CRBA) community welcomed transportation electrification expert Carleen Cullen of Cool the Earth, who drew from her vast experience guiding Bay Area residents to electrify their rides to fill us in on the current state of the EV marketplace and purchasing considerations. We got the real deal about where things stand with vehicle options, costs, charging, incentives, environmental impacts of batteries, and more, from Carleen and her colleague Annika Osborn.
Organized by past CRBA co-chair Harriet Harvey-Horn and CRBA Events co-chair Kevin Morrison, this is an excellent opportunity to learn first-hand about the EV transition.
About Carleen Cullen: Carleen is the co-founder and executive director of the nonprofit Cool the Earth, an independent nonprofit organization with a mission to reduce carbon emissions in a fair and just marketplace. She’s also a trained CRP Leader (San Francisco, 2012). She served as Governor Gavin Newsom's EV policy advisor during his gubernatorial campaign and was influential in bringing about his executive order to ban the sale of new gas cars. In 2021, Carleen launched the Reliable Electric Transportation Initiative (RETI), a major new initiative to improve the reliability of the EV charging infrastructure. She is a subject matter expert and co-authored a study on the topic with UC Berkeley. Carleen is working with state and national leaders on solutions to improve EV reliability from the driver's perspective and is an active speaker on the topic. Carleen is also a member of ChargeX, the national charging experience consortium led by Idaho National Labs, where her work focuses on improving the driver experience. Formerly an IT entrepreneur who helped launch and take Ovid Technologies public, Carleen shifted her focus to nonprofit climate change work in 2006. She is the recipient of the prestigious Jefferson Award for Public Service.
Carleen is also the creator of Cool the Earth's other cornerstone program, Cool the Earth Schools. The K-5 program has educated 250,000 children about climate change and solutions their families can take to reduce their carbon footprint. In 5 counties and 5 languages, Cool the Earth schools has motivated more than 300,000 energy-saving actions.
Watch the video and/or download the slides!
You can reach Cool the Earth at info@cooltheearth.org
You can reach Ride and Drive Clean at info@rideanddriveclean.org