What’s a $1 billion+ anyway? It’s only money, right?
With over $1 billion spent, California’s Clean Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project is one of the state’s most well-financed environmental initiatives.
By subsidizing up to 90% of the cost of hybrid and zero-emission vehicles, state officials say the project has helped businesses and transit agencies deploy nearly 12,000 trucks, buses and vans throughout California — particularly in neighborhoods that have been plagued by cancer-causing diesel pollution.
But what was designed 17 years ago to be the nation’s premier green transportation initiative is now facing accusations of fraud, waste and poor oversight.
In 2022, California’s air board (CARB) found at least ten Green Commuter vans—backed by nearly $1 million in state money—still sitting unassembled at a factory, the LA Times reported. They’re one example of subsidized vehicles that never actually hit the road.
CARB says vehicles in its HVIP program have driven more than 340 million miles since 2009. But that number relies on manufacturers turning in quarterly mileage data. The LA Times found that since 2020, companies haven’t submitted a single report for 64% of the vehicles.
Without those reports, CARB is using an estimate. Across roughly 16,000 vehicles, hitting 340 million miles would mean each one averaged about 21,000 miles. Many haven’t come close. One example: a $630,000 bus the LA Department of Transportation bought in June 2024 has only driven 555 miles.
CARB assumes buses will drive 30,000 miles a year and other vehicles 12,000 when calculating environmental benefits. The LA Times checked data on 2,300 vehicles and found half fell short of those targets.
Of the 340 million miles CARB claims, it says 181 million are “zero-emission.” But 45% of the fleet are hybrids that still burn some fuel. In LA, the pure electric vehicles have been driven 36% less than the hybrids, the paper reported.
Even after Nikola founder Trevor Milton was indicted in 2021 for allegedly defrauding investors of $1 billion over claims his company was building hydrogen trucks to rival Tesla, Nikola still got $50 million in HVIP money for those trucks, the LA Times reported.
The trucks often didn’t work, and once Nikola went bankrupt in 2025 there was no way to get them fixed. Independent trucker Bill Hall told the paper: “I’m all for zero emissions, but as a small-business owner, I can’t afford to have $123,000 go down the drain.” HVIP had covered 75% of his hydrogen semi; when it broke and Nikola couldn’t support it anymore, he had to park it for good.
Of the 57 companies that received HVIP funding, 15 have either shut down or left the electric-vehicle business. Five of them face fraud allegations yet collected more than $122 million in state money.
California’s attorney general is also looking into claims that some participants changed vehicle identification numbers (VINs) to collect multiple subsidies for the same truck. The LA Times flagged 2,681 VINs that didn’t match the model year on their vouchers. CARB, however, says those were probably just typing errors.
Climate alarmism stands as the most expensive, destructive falsehood ever foisted on humanity. The CARB fiasco is nothing more than a microscopic speck on a continent-sized glacier of waste. No ideology, religion, or delusion in recorded history has engineered a greater cascade of squandered capital, mass credulity, and systemic fraud than the climate-alarm machine has inflicted over the past three decades.
PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay
