International ZEV Alliance Grows to 11 Member Governments

After launching the International Zero-Emission Vehicle Alliance (ZEV Alliance) in August, the governments of California, The Netherlands and Quebec have signed on new partners to join the alliance.

Eight more North American and European governments have pledged to help accelerate global adoption of ZEVs, including Norway and the U.K. in Europe; and Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont in the U.S.

Notably, the seven U.S. states in this alliance are also members of a multi-state task force created in 2013 to support electric vehicles.

Members of the alliance, which together account for more than a third of global electric vehicle sales, will cooperate to set ambitious targets to drive ZEV deployment, share data and best practice policies, and encourage other governments to join them. An agenda for expanding collaboration is outlined in a report released Tuesday by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT).

The ICCT report, “Transition to a Global Zero-Emission Vehicle Fleet: A Collaborative Agenda for Governments,” highlights how the world's leading electric vehicle markets are being shaped by new and innovative public policies, including consumer incentives and infrastructure investments. The report also identifies a variety of ways that governments can improve collaboration to accelerate ZEV adoption.

“In these early years in the transition, there is much to learn from every region's experience in the roll-out of zero-emission vehicles. Developing the new zero-emission vehicle market will require global scale, in the tens of millions of vehicles, to achieve lower cost and long-term success,” the report says. “International collaboration will be a critical step toward greater market volume and a long-term market transformation.”

In September, ICCT estimates that the number of plug-in electric vehicles on the world's roads reached 1 million – a major milestone in the emergence of this new industry. The report says this milestone was achieved in about six years – several years faster than it took for non-plug-in hybrid electric vehicles to reach the first million in sales. But with global vehicles approaching 2 billion, electric vehicle growth will have to ramp up dramatically to achieve long-term climate goals, the report adds.