Encouraging New Choices Through Incentives for Electric Vehicles

In 2015, Apex introduced our DriveElectric initiative, which offers employees the opportunity to secure a bonus to help offset the cost of purchasing an electric or hybrid-electric vehicle. Employees are eligible for $4,000 (paid quarterly over four years) toward the purchase of an all-electric vehicle and $3,000 (paid in thirds over three years) toward a plug-in hybrid.

Combined with the federal tax incentive for electric vehicles (EVs) and other potential discounts such as reduced-rate insurance, it’s the type of incentive we hope will help accelerate adoption of clean energy solutions outside the workplace.

One household taking advantage of our EV incentive has not one “Apexer” but two. David Balfrey, our vice president of technology and energy assessment, and his wife Ellen, senior director of finance at Apex, were in the market for a new car. With a growing family, they were putting practicality—including fuel efficiency and overall cost—first.

When they did the math, adding up the Apex incentive, a dealership discount, plus the $7,500 in federal tax credits, they found that their new 2016 Ford Focus Electric model cost less than half of its MSRP—and several thousand dollars less than the basic Focus hatchback that runs on gasoline.

Apex was founded to accelerate the shift to clean energy, and DriveElectric was designed to help our employees make this shift in their own lives. Today’s EVs are technologically advanced, powerful, quiet, and practical, and we hope our workplace incentive helps make this technology even more accessible for Apex team members.

In 2016, we went even further, instituting a new financial incentive to encourage Apexers to give up their parking space and take public transportation, walk, or bike to work—and virtually overnight 30 fewer employees were driving to work each day. Apex has also rolled out a residential solar program, similar to our EV incentive, to accelerate interest in distributed generation.

Our next task, beyond encouraging even more Apexers to participate, is bringing our city along as well. Together with a growing sector of clean energy companies based in Charlottesville, we are going to work to encourage other businesses to offer clean energy incentives, expand local accessibility to EV charging stations, scale up rideshare programs, and retool our downtown business district to welcome this movement.