Energy

California Climate Boondoggle: State Program Facing Slew Of Fraud, Mismanagement Accusations

California High-Speed Rail Authority, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

California’s flagship public electric transportation program has spent over $1 billion and faces allegations of fraud and inadequate government oversight, the Los Angeles Times reported on Oct. 18.

The California Clean Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project (HVIP) has spent $1 billion subsidizing allegedly over 16,000 electric vehicles for the Golden State. However, the project has been accused of misallocating millions of dollars, according to an exposé by the LA Times.

The project’s government managers claim the exposé is misleading and incomplete.

The accusations range from HVIP greatly exaggerating the miles driven by its electric fleet to accusations that HVIP was defrauded by partnering manufacturers into subsidizing vehicles that do not exist.

“What a surprise: A California “green” energy program rife with accusations of fraud, waste, and corruption. Gavin Newsom must be so proud,” public policy consultant David Blackmon told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

HVIP is overseen by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), a government agency managed by political appointees of Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom, which defended the program’s work.

“The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is disappointed by recent misleading reporting from the Los Angeles Times on the Clean Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project (HVIP). Despite months of engagement with the reporters, the resulting work presents an incomplete picture of a program that has successfully improved air quality and accelerated the adoption of cleaner vehicle technologies in California for more than 17 years,” CARB said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The LA Times did not respond to the DCNF’s questions about their report.

‘340 Million Miles’

CARB found at least ten vans that Green Commuter had leased with nearly $1 million in state funding sitting unassembled at a factory in 2022, the LA Times reported.

The Green Commuter vans are just one example of subsidized vehicles that never hit the road, and CARB maintains that HVIP-funded vehicles have traveled over 340 million miles since the program’s inception in 2009, according to its statement to the DCNF.

However, to arrive at this number, CARB requires partnered manufacturers to submit telematics data on the number of miles each of their vehicles has driven every quarter. These manufacturers have not submitted a single mileage report for 64% of the subsidized vehicles since 2020, the LA Times alleged.

“Some manufacturers had difficulties in providing the data to CARB and the program administrator. We continuously work with the manufacturers to improve the data they submit,” CARB told the DCNF.

Without these mileage reports, CARB relies on an estimated benchmark for its claim of 340 million miles driven. Across a fleet of 16,000 vehicles, the average number of miles driven per vehicle would need to be around 21,000. Many vehicles in the fleet have not come close to this benchmark, the LA Times reported.

The Los Angeles Department of Transportation purchased a $630,000 bus in June 2024 that has only driven 555 miles, according to the LA Times.

“HVIP doesn’t have a usage requirement,” CARB told the DCNF.

However, CARB does have an estimated benchmark of how much their subsidized vehicles will be driven in order to calculate expected environmental impact: 30,000 miles per year for public buses and 12,000 for any other class of vehicle, the LA Times claimed. The LA Times reviewed the mileage reports on 2,300 vehicles, and found that half of those drove below their yearly benchmark.

CARB boasts 340 million miles driven by its subsidized EV fleet: 181 million of those miles are allegedly “zero emission miles,” according to a CARB statement to the DCNF. However, in the fleet, 45% of the vehicles are hybrids that burn some level of fossil fuels. In LA, the purely electric vehicles drive 36% less than the hybrid ones, according to the LA Times.

‘Manufacturers Going Bankrupt’

“California’s dismal failure of an EV bus program is no different from what cities all over the country have experienced: Massive cost overruns, vehicle under-performance, horrific maintenance problems, manufacturers going bankrupt, and more,” Blackmon told the DCNF.

Even after Nikola Corporation founder Trevor Milton was criminally indicted in 2021 for defrauding investors of $1 billion dollars by claiming his company was producing hydrogen-powered vehicles to rival Tesla, Milton was still able to source $50 million from HVIP to subsidize Nikola trucks, the LA Times reported.

Customers found that the trucks did not work and could not receive maintenance because Nikola proceeded to go bankrupt in 2025, the LA Times said.

“I’m all for zero emissions, but as a small-business owner, I can’t afford to have $123,000 go down the drain,” independent trucker Bill Hall told the LA Times. Hall purchased a hydrogen-powered semi-truck from Nikola; although 75% of the truck’s cost was subsidized by HVIP, when the truck broke down, Hall was left with no choice but to permanently sideline his costly semi because Nikola dissolved and could not rehabilitate its hydrogen fleet, according to the LA Times.

Of the 57 manufacturers to receive HVIP subsidization, 15 have either closed their doors permanently or exited the EV market, the LA Times reported. Five of these companies are accused of fraud, but have received over $122 million in state funding, the LA Times alleged.

Furthermore, authorities in the corporate fraud section of California’s attorney general’s office are investigating several HVIP participants for allegedly altering vehicle identification numbers (VINs) to receive multiple subsidies for a single vehicle, the LA Times alleged. The LA Times found 2,681 suspicious VINs that did not corroborate their voucher’s model year. CARB suggests these VINs were mistyped into their system.

“The [LA Times] article focuses on a limited number of cases involving alleged wrongdoing in the program while failing to acknowledge that CARB’s own oversight, investigations, and enforcement efforts identified those issues,” CARB explained to the DCNF.

‘Latest Boondoggle’

“Climate alarmism has become the single most costly false narrative in world history, and this latest boondoggle from CARB is just a tiny tip of a gigantic iceberg,” Blackmon told the DCNF.

Blackmon pointed to Maine’s inoperable electric public school buses as an example of faulty and expensive clean public transit. He directed readers to read about Minnesota’s electric bus fleet, which struggles to drive in the winter and requires diesel-powered heating to keep riders warm. Jackson Hole, Wyoming’s electric bus fleet is idle after its California-based manufacturer filed for bankruptcy.

“No other set of mythical beliefs has ever resulted in the magnitude of misallocated capital and public stupidity and outright fraud that the climate alarm lobby has succeeded in creating over the last 30 years,” Blackmon said to the DCNF.