California's Transition Towards a Future-Proof Transport & Mobility Sector - An Explaining Outcome Case Study -

Abstract

Today, California is not only considered to be a vanguard of science, technology, and innovation, but has also established effective emission standards and the world’s most ambitious roadmap towards a future mobility sector fully based zero-emission-vehicles (ZEVs). While the origins of this noteworthy development go back to the 1940s, when the city of Los Angeles suffered from air pollution and smog, especially during the last 20 years many efforts have been taken in terms of GHG emissions reductions and cleaner vehicles.

Regarding this, especially California’s ambitious ZEV Program needs to be considered as a cutting-edge approach towards a sustainable and future-proof transport and mobility sector. It not only comprises ambitious GHG emissions reductions targets and market-based mechanisms (Cap-and-Trade), but also mandatory annual ZEV sales targets.

In order to fully grasp and understand the evolution of the ZEV Program in detail, this research is to re-trace the most important events in order to provide a full explanation of the major factors that make up the overall success-story. The overall time-period of two decades (2002-2022) will be allocated in different phases and episodes that will be presented in a more or less chronological order. However, when necessary or useful, there might be some leaps in time (flashbacks) as well.

The different episodes were mainly arranged in order to take account of relevant changes of government, either on the state-level or on the federal level. The naming of these episodes was not only done to deliver some proper buzzwords, but also to provide the episode’s essence within one or two words.