The California Energy Commission awarded grants totaling more than $46 million on Wednesday to four manufacturers of electric tractors, forklifts, car batteries, and charging stations with the intent to bolster in-state production of zero-emission vehicles and equipment.
Ranging from about $8 million to more than $14 million, the grants are among the largest manufacturing subsidies ever awarded by the CEC, part of a $184.7 million funding opportunity announced in March.
“We’re decarbonizing agriculture. We’re decarbonizing passenger vehicles. We’re decarbonizing industry, and we’re doing that by building things here,” CEC Chair David Hochschild said before the unanimous vote. “That is checking so many boxes, it’s just really exciting to me.”
The state is a leading manufacturer and exporter of ZEVs and related products. With Energy Commission oversight, the state and private industry are developing one of the world’s largest lithium sources in an area of Southern California known as Lithium Valley. (See ‘Lithium Valley’ Could Accelerate Calif. EV Sector Growth.)
“This is Lithium Valley,” Hochschild said of the manufacturers and products that received the grants. “These are all part of the same ecosystem. We’d like to see these electric vehicles being served with California lithium ultimately.”
More than 400 jobs will flow from the incentives, all of which were matched by industry, the CEC said.
The grants included $13 million to Monarch Tractor to establish a production line for its MK-V Electric Tractor and attachments in Livermore, California. The grant will help the state achieve its goal of reducing emissions from agriculture, its largest industry, by building 720 to 1,440 battery electric tractors per year, the CEC said.
A $10 million-plus grant to American Lithium Energy Corp., of Carlsbad, will help construct a fully automated battery cell assembly line that is expected to produce 1.5 million electric vehicle batteries annually while increasing the use of U.S. lithium and other domestic supplies, it said.
Wiggins Lift Co. of Oxnard received an $8.1 million grant to modernize and expand its Oxnard plant to increase production of its “eBull” zero-emission forklifts.
The largest grant of $14.6 million went to ChargePoint to increase its output of Level 2 charging stations and direct-current fast charging dispensers to 10,000 units each by 2026, the CEC said. The company manufactures its products in two facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The increase in chargers will eventually reduce carbon dioxide emissions by up to 1.6 million metric tons and create 264 manufacturing jobs, the commission said.
“A lot of people don’t know that right now California is the No. 1 source of ZEV manufacturing jobs, and we want to keep it that way,” said Commissioner Patty Monahan, who leads the CEC’s clean transportation efforts. That can be difficult because of California’s higher costs, so “these grants, I think, are welcome to the industry,” she said.