The electric car, deemed expensive and reserved for the wealthiest households, has gained ground in Huron, California. On the initiative of the mayor of the city, it became a free means of transport for all inhabitants. How did this farming town turn into a pioneer in green transportation?
As the Biden administration develops its multi-billion dollar plan to address the inequities that exist in the transition to green transportation, Huron has become a true frontrunner in the field. This small rural town, far from the big cities and where public transport is rare, has everything of a normal city, with one exception.
As the report from the Los Angeles Times, the program of the mayor of the city, Rey Léon, “started Huron, 6,206 inhabitants, on the hats of wheels : the municipality is on the way to having more charging stations per inhabitant than any other American agglomeration”. Indeed, these terminals are already thirty in number.
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Rey Léon is very committed to Huron. He wants to make his agricultural town a showcase for innovation in electric vehicles. An ambitious project, when you know that owning such a car requires a large sum of money and a “garage to be equipped with a charging station”. You should know that in Huron the median income per household is $25,000 per year, so it would be a luxury for residents to buy a car like this.
The concept of car sharing
As the article in the Los Angeles Times :
Rey León was determined: his community was not going to be left behind in the electric car revolution as it had been in so many other things. If some see in the aid granted to the electric car a gift to the rich on the East or West coast, the mayor saw it as an opportunity to seize for this city which he says is ‘geographically and linguistically isolated’.
In the city of Huron, mainly inhabited by a Hispanic population, with an immigrant background, the elected official created the Green Raiteros Program [programme “Chauffeurs verts”, où raiteros est une déclinaison en spanglish de l’anglais rider, “chauffeur”], a fleet of electric cars made available to residents free of charge for their daily journeys (going to the doctor, traveling to neighboring towns, etc.). According to Los Angeles Times, these measures “brands Huron as the greenest immigrant community in the country”.
Rey León is proud of this project, in the video he states that “Raiteros existed decades before Uber”, before adding: “If with Raiteros we had mastered social networks and technologies, it was Raiteros, and not Uber, who would have introduced the concept of carsharing to the world.”
Low emission vehicles
California authorities have warned that “the climate objectives set by the State cannot be achieved until low-emission technologies are democratized among the least favored populations”. Biden has pledged to prioritize environmental justice. There are only a handful of places in the country that have tried integrating electric vehicles into low-income communities, and most of them are in California.
In North America, the states with the worst air quality problems are also those with the least access to electric cars. The Los Angeles Times precise :
According to the Luskin Innovation Center at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), less than 6% of low-emission vehicles registered in California in 2019 were registered in the five most polluted and disadvantaged municipalities.
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