Mayors from across the country are committing to buying more than 2,100 electric vehicles — including school buses — by 2020 to fill out local government fleets.
The pledge was made by 127 cities across 38 states who have banded together to form a purchasing bloc, known as the Climate Mayors Electric Vehicle Purchasing Collaborative, in order to get better pricing on the vehicles.
“The clean transportation revolution is not a distant vision for the far-off future — it’s a reality hitting the streets of Los Angeles and cities around the world,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D), who founded the group in 2018, said in a release. “By pooling our purchasing power, Climate Mayors are sending a powerful message to the global car market: if you build electric vehicles, we will buy them.”
The collaborative estimates that by replacing aging vehicles with electric ones, the cities will collectively cut gas consumption by 1 million gallons a year.
The collaborative is especially interested in buying electric school buses and transit buses to replace current gas-guzzlers. School buses get around 6 mpg while transit buses get a little over 3 mpg, according to the Department of Energy.
The mayors say that switching to more electric vehicles will help them “cut emissions and fight climate change from the bottom-up.”
