VW Cheating Results in School Bus Funding
What would you do with $2.7 billion? That’s the portion of settlement money soon to be available for replacing aging diesel vehicles (including school buses) as a result of Volkswagen cheating the federal emission laws for diesel cars.
Blue Bird dealers are in an incredibly favorable position to potentially secure a portion of this funding for your customers, to displace their older diesel buses with new propane or CNG Visions. The government will be looking for easily executable alternative fuel programs — a term the government calls “shovel ready.”
The open comment period for the settlement decree closed on August 5, and are currently being reviewed by the government and Volkswagen. We expect in the next month or so to hear an announcement of the final approved program, outlining the who, what, where, when and how for the grant funding distribution.
While many details are up in the air, there are some immediate actions you can take right now to put you in the best spot to get a portion of your state’s funding allocation:
- Contact your local Clean Cities coalition and introduce yourself.
Find out what they’re doing in your state to tap into this funding — and ask how you can help. Consider joining the coalition, too. You can find your clean cities coordinator here: http://cleancities.energy.gov/coalitions/contacts/
- Contact your state energy office to discuss a proposal with them.
You can find a list here: http://www.naseo.org/members-states. Most likely, they’re looking for suggestions on how to spend the money, so the more people you can speak with before the policy is set, the better.
- Contact your ROUSH CleanTech sales rep and put together a turn-key program.
Your ROUSH CleanTech sales rep has templates to work from to put a turn-key funding program together. Most state energy offices will be looking for plug and play funding programs, and we have knowledgeable folks on staff who have successfully put programs like this together in the past. Let us work with you to put one together for your state.
If you have any questions, please reach out to your ROUSH CleanTech regional sales manager or visit our website to find out more about the Volkswagen decree.
