Vermont has launched the first phase of a new incentive program to help residents with lower incomes replace older, high-polluting light-duty vehicles with clean transportation alternatives.
Under the Replace Your Ride program, incentives of $3,000 are available on a first-come, first-served basis to income-eligible Vermont residents who retire an operational high-polluting vehicle that is at least 10 years old and switch to a new or used plug-in electric vehicle (PEV).
The Replace Your Ride program uses the same income eligibility requirements as Vermont’s Incentive Program for New Plug-in Electric Vehicles and MileageSmart, the state’s used vehicle incentive program. In this first phase, applicants for Replace Your Ride will be eligible to stack the $3,000 incentive with one of the existing (new or used) plug-in electric vehicle incentives. Information on these programs is available at Drive Electric Vermont’s website.
“The transportation sector accounts for about 40% of Vermont’s carbon emissions. The state is working to rapidly reduce these harmful emissions by providing incentives for Vermonters to switch to cleaner transportation options, and allowing those incentives to be combined with existing state and local utility programs for even greater cost-savings,” said Transportation Secretary Joe Flynn.
To qualify for the Replace Your Ride program, applicants must be Vermont residents and listed on both the new PEV purchase or lease agreement and the old, replaced vehicle registration. Incentives are currently available at the point of sale or lease, and limited to one per person for the life of the program.
In a second phase of the program, to be launched by November 2, 2022, participants will be able to choose alternatives to personal car ownership. Eligible applicants can receive a card preloaded with a $3,000 voucher to use on eligible clean transportation expenses at participating electric bike shops or for shared mobility options.
Replace Your Ride is funded with $4.5 million through the 2021 and 2022 Transportation Bills.
The Vermont Agency of Transportation selected the nonprofit Center for Sustainable Energy (CSE) to develop and administer the Replace Your Ride program as part of a suite of cleaner transportation incentives. CSE runs clean transportation incentive programs in seven states and has interacted with half a million new electric vehicle buyers.
“Scrap-and-replace programs like Vermont's that get inefficient older vehicles off the road are essential to speeding up the reduction in harmful greenhouse gas emissions,” said CSE Senior Director of Transportation Programs Mark Bielecki. “Replacing a 10-year-old combustion engine vehicle with an EV will prevent up to 27 metric tons of CO2 from being emitted over 100,000 miles of driving. Vermont is a leading state in adopting this kind of program, and we expect more will follow their example."
