Massachusetts city offers EV adoption as employee benefit

Nicole LaChapelle, the mayor of Easthampton, Mass., has partnered with MoveEV, a Somerville, Mass.-based electric vehicle technology company, to switch the city’s municipal-use vehicles to EVs and offer its employees an incentive for using EVs.

MoveEV’s artificial intelligence-driven technology helps make EV adoption accessible and affordable for corporations and municipalities.

An EV benefit program includes both education for employees as well as purchase incentives. MoveEV says that 84% of its customer employees have a car, so many will find tangible benefits to reduce the cost of buying an EV and charging infrastructure. The incentives offered can complement the current $7,500 tax credit from the Inflation Reduction Act, which MoveEV points out is a real benefit that affects employees now, as opposed to a 401(k) plan, which by context cannot be accessed for years or decades. Moreover, EV ownership saves employees money as they don’t have to pay for gas, and EVs have been found to require far less maintenance than their fossil-fuel driven counterparts.

Easthampton claims to be the first city in the U.S. to offer its employees an EV adoption benefit and transition all city-owned vehicles to EVs at the same time. EV adoption will help move Easthampton toward achieving its Climate Action Plan goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.

The MoveEV partnership will collectively help city employees claim up to $3 million in federal and state incentives, and save $900,000 on gasoline per year. Swapping out conventional vehicles for EVs cuts an estimated 4.7 metric tons of CO2 emissions each year per vehicle on average and could remove 1,500 metric tons of CO2 emissions per year. For the city’s fleet vehicles, the planned transition over the next 5 to 10 years is expected to save the city $360,000 per year on gasoline alone, and will remove 600 metric tons of CO2 annually.

“In a fast moving industry, this public-private partnership with MoveEV gives Easthampton the technical support necessary to move toward vehicle decarbonization,” said LaChappelle. “Electric car by electric car, the city will see a measurable material impact – environmental and financial – while leveraging government and private incentives.”

The city of Easthampton plans an Earth Day event for its employees on April 20th, during which employees can test drive electric vehicles on site. The MoveEV employee benefits portal will also be showcased, which provides information on the costs of their current gas-powered vehicle and provides a step-by-step process to help them manage their EV transition and take advantage of federal, state, and local EV adoption incentives.

“Electric vehicles are a game-changer for the environment, and will also save the city and its taxpayers a tremendous amount of money,” said David Lewis, MoveEV’s founder and CEO.

According to the Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center, a database for EV charging stations, the city of Easthampton currently has 10 public EV charging station locations in operations by network operators ChargePoint and AmpUp.