NYC and LA Are Teaming Up to Fight for EVs

纽约市与洛杉矶县联手推动电动汽车普及

New York City is not a car town. But pay attention as you walk, bike, or, sure, drive around the country’s most populous city, and you might notice a car trend: an increasing number of its vehicles are electric. The city government operates some 5,800 EVs, plus 4,700 hybrid vehicles—Parks Department pickups, Police Department crossover SUVs, school buses, paramedic response vehicles, even some hulking garbage trucks. A local law requires the city to transition its entire light- and medium-duty fleet to batteries by 2035 and its trucks by 2038.

纽约市并非一座“汽车之城”。但如果你在穿行于这座全美人口最多的城市时留意观察——无论是步行、骑行还是开车——你可能会发现一个趋势：越来越多的车辆正在实现电动化。纽约市政府目前运营着约 5,800 辆电动汽车和 4,700 辆混合动力汽车，涵盖了公园管理局的皮卡、警察局的跨界 SUV、校车、急救车辆，甚至还有笨重的垃圾车。根据当地法律，该市必须在 2035 年前将其所有轻型和中型车队更换为电池驱动，并在 2038 年前完成卡车的电动化转型。

Los Angeles County, a car town, has its own EV goals: 100 percent fleet electrification by 2045, which would require replacing all 20,000 of the fleet’s vehicles. With just 600 electric vehicles and 350 plug-ins so far, officials have plenty of work to do.

洛杉矶县作为一座典型的“汽车之城”，也有自己的电动汽车目标：到 2045 年实现车队 100% 电动化，这意味着需要更换全部 20,000 辆公务用车。目前，该县仅拥有 600 辆纯电动汽车和 350 辆插电式混合动力汽车，官员们仍有大量工作要做。

So on Thursday, the country’s most-populous city announced it would band together with the country’s most-populous county to form what it hopes is a powerful advocacy bloc for electric vehicles. The “bicoastal bridge,” as officials are calling it, will use their combined purchasing power to push manufacturers to keep up the electric work, even despite the industry’s wider challenges.

因此，本周四，这座全美人口最多的城市宣布将与全美人口最多的县联手，组建一个他们所期望的强有力的电动汽车倡导联盟。官员们将此称为“跨海岸桥梁”，旨在利用双方合并后的采购能力，推动制造商继续推进电动化进程，即便在行业面临广泛挑战的情况下也不例外。

But hitting those marks will take some finagling. US vehicle manufacturers simply don’t make electric versions of some of the vehicles the city needs: electric passenger vans, fire department pumper trucks that fit city specifications, and, for New York, snowplows. Electric vehicle charging can still be a pain point—New York operates roughly 2,500 charging ports, making it the state’s largest network, but it will need lots more and solid backup plans if power fails before EVs can expand more widely.

然而，要实现这些目标并非易事。美国汽车制造商目前根本没有生产某些城市所需的电动车型，例如电动客货车、符合城市规格的消防泵车，以及纽约市所需的扫雪车。电动汽车充电仍然是一个痛点——纽约市目前运营着约 2,500 个充电桩，是该州最大的充电网络，但若要进一步扩大电动汽车规模，不仅需要更多的充电设施，还需要在电力中断时有可靠的备用方案。

The Trump administration’s war on electric cars and the industry’s retreat from once-ambitious electrification timelines give local government officials some degree of agita. “There have been a series of announcements that are concerning to us,” says Keith Kerman, the city’s chief fleet officer and the deputy commissioner of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, which handles vehicle purchases across the city’s agencies. (Kerman took WIRED’s call from the front seat of a parked Toyota Prius Prime, a plug-in hybrid.) “There are headwinds for electrification in the United States right now.”

特朗普政府对电动汽车的排斥态度，以及汽车行业从曾经雄心勃勃的电动化时间表中撤退，让地方政府官员感到些许焦虑。“近期的一系列公告让我们感到担忧，”纽约市首席车队官兼全市行政服务部副局长基思·克尔曼（Keith Kerman）表示，该部门负责处理全市各机构的车辆采购。（克尔曼在接受《连线》杂志采访时，正坐在停放的丰田普锐斯 Prime 插电混动车的前座上。）“目前美国的电动化进程正面临逆风。”

The partnership “is really about having the market understand where we’re going so they can actually supply us,” says Quintin Haynes, the chief deputy director of the Los Angeles County Internal Services Department, which handles vehicle purchasing for some 40 agencies across the county.

“这次合作的真正目的，是让市场了解我们的发展方向，从而能够为我们提供所需的产品，”洛杉矶县内部服务部首席副主任昆廷·海恩斯（Quintin Haynes）说道，该部门负责为全县约 40 个机构处理车辆采购事宜。

It is indeed a weird time to be an automaker, as US federal incentives disappear and support dwindles for newer electric-powered cars. “Manufacturers would really like to know what the future will be and what are the rules,” says Mike Finnern, the senior vice president and zero-emission fleet lead at WSP, a consulting firm. Guarantees of large, future orders from fleet managers like city governments, but also private businesses, “will help them be stable for a while.”

对于汽车制造商来说，这确实是一个尴尬的时期，因为美国的联邦激励措施正在消失，对新型电动汽车的支持也在减少。“制造商们非常想知道未来会怎样，规则又是什么，”咨询公司 WSP 的高级副总裁兼零排放车队负责人迈克·芬纳恩（Mike Finnern）表示。来自市政府及私营企业等车队管理方的大额未来订单承诺，“将有助于他们在一段时间内保持稳定。”

EVs are a nice fit for government fleets, Finnern says. Surveys suggest that regular car buyers are still plenty apprehensive about shifting to a plug-in from gas cars they’re used to, and they want cars with even longer ranges, even if they seldom use the whole battery. But governments know exactly how their vehicles are used, can more precisely control charging, and are able to see that today’s ranges of 250 to 400 miles per charge fit their needs fine. Plus, EVs might help governments save money on fueling and maintenance. Private operators like Amazon aren’t stopping their forays into EVs, and “they wouldn’t do it if it didn’t pencil out,” he says.

芬纳恩认为，电动汽车非常适合政府车队。调查显示，普通购车者对于从习惯的燃油车转向插电式汽车仍有很大顾虑，他们希望车辆拥有更长的续航里程，即便他们很少用到全部电量。但政府非常清楚车辆的使用方式，能够更精确地控制充电，并且能够看出目前单次充电 250 到 400 英里的续航里程完全符合他们的需求。此外，电动汽车还能帮助政府节省燃油和维护成本。像亚马逊这样的私营运营商并没有停止在电动汽车领域的投入，他说：“如果这笔账算不过来，他们是不会这么做的。”

“I regret every electric and hybrid vehicle we haven’t bought yet,” says Kerman. “It would’ve shielded us from the doubling of fuel costs that we’re now enduring.” By partnering with the US Department of Transportation, his agency has found that switching to battery electrics improves New York City’s vehicle energy economy by 6 percent.

“我为我们还没买的每一辆电动和混合动力汽车感到遗憾，”克尔曼说。“如果买了，我们就能免受现在燃料成本翻倍的困扰。”通过与美国交通部合作，他的部门发现，改用纯电动汽车使纽约市的车辆能源经济性提高了 6%。

Still, both governments say they have plenty to learn about how and where EVs fit best and that the partnership will help them share and create best practices so that other cities might eventually follow.

尽管如此，双方政府都表示，在如何以及在何处最有效地使用电动汽车方面，他们还有很多东西要学。此次合作将帮助他们分享并制定最佳实践方案，以便其他城市最终能够效仿。

One big takeaway from the government’s experience so far is that officials need to be proactive and mindful about getting city workers on board. There are technical challenges—maintenance workers need to be retrained to maintain EVs instead of gas-powered vehicles, and everyone needs to remember to plug them in—and trickier morale ones, too.

政府迄今为止的经验中，一个重要的启示是：官员们需要积极主动并审慎地争取城市员工的支持。这不仅涉及技术挑战——维修人员需要接受再培训以维护电动汽车而非燃油车，每个人也需要养成充电的习惯——还涉及更棘手的士气问题。

Workers don’t always appreciate sudden changes. And while New York’s data suggests that the intelligent speed assistance built into many of its new EVs reduces speeding and possibly crash severity in city vehicles, employees have lingering worries about workplace surveillance. (In March, the city workers’ union reached an agreement outlining how data collected from city vehicles might be used in disciplinary actions.)

员工并不总是乐于接受突如其来的改变。虽然纽约的数据表明，许多新电动汽车内置的智能速度辅助系统减少了超速行为，并可能降低了城市车辆的事故严重程度，但员工们对工作场所的监控仍存有顾虑。（今年 3 月，城市工会达成了一项协议，明确了从城市车辆收集的数据如何用于纪律处分。）

A workforce that’s enthusiastic about EVs can make all the difference. “We’ve seen some deployments be really successful and some, not so much. They have the exact same problems, but some were able to overcome them because their people were excited about it and trained,” Finnern says.

拥有一支对电动汽车充满热情的员工队伍至关重要。“我们看到有些部署非常成功，有些则不然。他们面临的问题完全相同，但有些团队能够克服困难，因为他们的员工对此感到兴奋并接受了培训，”芬纳恩说。

Haynes, who used to work with Kerman in New York before moving to Los Angeles, recalls that he was once an EV skeptic but changed his mind once Kerman coaxed him into trying out a Tesla. It was, above all, fun.

在搬到洛杉矶之前曾与克尔曼在纽约共事的海恩斯回忆说，他曾经也是一名电动汽车怀疑论者，但在克尔曼劝说他试驾了一辆特斯拉后，他改变了主意。最重要的是，这真的很有趣。

“I will tell you, no one goes into these electric cars, walks out and says, ‘I hate this car,’” Kerman says. “They all say, ‘I love the car.”

“我可以告诉你，没有人开过这些电动汽车后会说‘我讨厌这辆车’，”克尔曼说。“他们只会说，‘我爱这辆车。’”