During the second day of the Rocky Mountain Institute's Smart Garage charrette, we moved from the challenging (and somewhat depressing) task of identifying all of the challenges to getting the supporting infrastructure in place to coming up with solutions. The group I chose to participate in was tasked with figuring out a way to create a market of at least one million PHEVs so that automakers (OEMs) can feel confident in scaling up their manufacturing.

Britta Gross of GM and Chelsea Sexton, formerly of EV1 fame and now working for Plug-in America, were leading the charge. You could sense the urgency in Gross' voice as she was asking for any ideas that would help her company to market the Volt. Gross explained how the demand doesn't need to be there during the first year because GM will lose a lot of money with each car they build. After an hour of heated debate about how to market the vehicles, we split into two sub-groups, with mine focusing on identifying a group of incentives that would encourage the purchase of plug-in vehicles.

We created Project Get Ready, based on a Portland initiative of the same name (more details to come).

This proposed project would be a citywide effort to get 100,000 PHEVs purchased within three years.

The incentives we decided on included:
-- Free electricity for the life of the vehicles
-- A discounted rate on green energy from the utility
-- Free downtown parking
-- Free vehicle registration, a sales tax exemption, and environmental waiver to eliminate emissions testing
-- HOV lane driving, free road tolls
-- Free home charger installation (including smart meters)
-- State tax credit
-- Free public charging at muni lots, as well as free parking
-- Discounts on solar panel
-- Three "seed" sponsor companies would create financial incentives for their employees to buy PHEVs and provide free workplace charging

Local participants, some of whom would provide funding grants or sponsorships include:

-- State air quality departments (many of which have CO2 emissions targets)
-- Mayor's office, city planning bureau
-- State department of transportation
-- Regional transit authority
-- Business leaders
-- Community EV/plug-in groups
-- Utilities

If this is rolled out in 20 cities it would create a market of 2 million PHEVs. Going city by city makes sense because that's the likely way that the PHEV infrastructure will evolve.

Here's a list of 20 likely cities. Who is missing?

Portland
Seattle
San Francisco
Madison
Boston
San Jose
Philadelphia
Dallas
Austin
Chicago
Miami
Washington D.C.
Denver
Boulder
Ann Arbor
New York
Sacramento
Los Angeles
Atlanta
Minneapolis

So are these enough incentives to get you to buy a PHEV during the first three years? If not, what is missing? Would your city be interested?

(Click here for our full PHEV coverage)