Many of the nation’s leading advocates and government representatives working to promote clean cars gathered at the Buehler Alumni Visitor Center March 22 and 23 to share experiences, hear presentations from marketing experts, and grapple with the complex challenge of marketing clean and efficient vehicles. The workshop, sponsored by ITS-Davis and funded by the Steven and Michele Kirsch Foundation and U.S. Dept. of Energy, launched a major new ITS-Davis initiative to accelerate market penetration of clean, efficient vehicle technologies. ITS-Davis researchers Ken Kurani and Tom Turrentine are managing the project.

The workshop opened with a comprehensive overview of the components of a social marketing campaign. Christi Black, APR, a partner in the Sacramento office of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, told the more than 50 by-invitation attendees that creating public awareness about a problem, then empowering consumers to make a change to address the problem, are the tenets of social marketing. “A successful campaign starts with a solid program, includes partnerships and public participation, affects policy, involves politics, and requires public relations and proof of success,” she said.

Participants heard from others who have successfully implemented marketing campaigns around clean air policy and electric vehicle programs. They also heard from Toyota and Honda on their hybrid car marketing efforts. Mark Baines, who manages alternative fuel vehicle sales for San Francisco Honda, described the challenges he faces due to a sales structure that results in his products often being overlooked by fleet managers.

A number of panel participants discussed their new green car outreach programs. These included presentations on rating systems such as CARBs “smog index,” the EPA’s new Green Star system, ACEEE’s Green Car system, and the DOE’s fuel economy guide. On an international note, Natural Resources Canada announced its new “Drive Green” outreach program. Additionally, participants discussed the role of incentives, voluntary “green” labeling by manufacturers, consumer response to ratings systems and labeling, and the integration of fuel efficiency goals with clean vehicle goals.

The second day started with overviews of agency programs from DOE Office of Transportation Technologies’ David Rodgers and California Air Resources Board Chairman Alan Lloyd. Dr. Lloyd told the audience that California has invested a lot of resources into its Zero-Emission Vehicle program, and automakers have invested a great deal to comply with the regulation. He acknowledged, however, that ZEV program advocates must also support the technical “visionaries” in the engineering departments at the major auto companies to ensure they have the backup they need when they go to management with plans to produce clean cars.

On the second day, participants split up into smaller groups to develop creative strategies market clean and efficient vehicles. Overall, participants have rated the workshop as a great success: “…it was a very stimulating time and helpful…since grappling with these issues is the focal point of what I do,” one participant wrote on the evaluation form.

Kurani and Turrentine are compiling a workshop report, and will incorporate the proceedings into the larger research effort, which will include an exhaustive literature review on consumer car-buying habits, and potential approaches for marketing clean and efficient vehicles. These proceedings, available from the ITS-Davis publications desk, will be free to Affiliate Program companies and workshop attendees. There will be a charge for other requests.

Read about ITS-Davis researcher Andy Burke’s May 15-16 workshop in the next e-news.

Can EVs help to support the California utility grid? Yes, says a new collaborative report funded by the California Air Resources Board and Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and produced jointly by ITS-Davis, the University of Delaware and AC Propulsion.

Timothy Lipman, who is now a post-doctoral researcher at UC Berkeley but who started this project after receiving his Ph.D. from UC Davis and while affiliated with ITS-Davis, worked with colleagues from University of Delaware and AC Propulsion on this preliminary investigation into the feasibility of using electric-drive vehicles as distributed sources of electric power and regulation services to the California electric grid.

The project team has concluded that electric-drive vehicles can become an important resource for the California electric utility system, and that their use would provide system reliability and economic benefits. The economic value of these benefits shows the potential to offset the initially higher costs of electric-drive vehicles and may make the net cost of purchasing and operating them lower than that of conventional gasoline vehicles. The project team concluded that the cost of electricity that would come from these vehicles is too high to be competitive for baseload power, but that vehicles may prove to be competitive in three other markets: peak power, spinning reserves, and grid regulation.