National Federal Fleet Loaner Program, Interim Status Report

The goal of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Loaner Program is to increase the awareness, deployment, and use of electric vehicles (EVs) in Federal fleets. The Loaner Program accomplishes this by providing free EVs to Federal fleets on a loaner basis, generally for 1 or 2 months. The Program partners DOE with six electric utilities, with DOE providing financial support and some leads on Federal fleets interested in obtaining EVs. The utilities obtain the vehicles, identify candidate loaner fleets, loan the vehicles, provide temporary charging infrastructure, provide overall support to participating Federal fleets, and support fleets with their leasing decisions. While the utilities have not had the success initially envisioned by themselves, DOE, the Edison Electric Institute, and the Electric Vehicle Association of the Americas, the utilities can not be faulted for their efforts, as they are not the entity that makes the ultimate lease or no-lease decision. Some external groups have suggested to DOE that they direct other federal agencies to change their processes to make loaning vehicles easier; this is simply not within the power of DOE. By law, a certain percentage of all new vehicle acquisitions are supposed to be alternative fuel vehicles (AFV); however, with no enforcement, the federal agencies are not compelled to lease AFVs such as electric vehicles