Clean-Air Vehicles at a Fraction of the Price

Fleets / purchasers do not apply for HVIP vouchers directly. HVIP-eligible dealers are responsible for securing HVIP voucher funding through the online Voucher Processing Center. A purchaser should connect with an HVIP-approved dealer to acquire their vehicle and the dealer will take it from there to acquire the voucher. If you have a trusted dealer relationship or already have a vehicle in mind, connect us with your dealer and we can help them become HVIP-eligible.

If you are a school district in a small- or medium-sized air district, the FY21-22 School Bus Set-Aside has been fully subscribed. School buses are now being funded with standard HVIP funds.

Yes, there are different requirements depending on fleet size, effective January 1, 2023, including flexibility for stacking with other state incentive programs, exceptions to the manufacturer soft rolling cap, reserved funds, bulk purchase requirements, and voucher adjustments. Additional fleet size requirements will take effect starting January 1, 2024. See the Funding Updates page and HVIP FY22-23 Policy Changes and Funding announcement for more details.

For ISEF, fleets must contain 20 or fewer trucking operating in California and less than $15 million in annual revenue. Please check Appendix F for more details on eligibility requirements.

Yes. Fleets may request up to 30 vouchers per calendar year. The cap for drayage fleets is set at 50 voucher requests per year. Requests that are redeemed within the same year they are requested do not count against the cap.

HVIP does not require scrappage of an old vehicle except for the Public School Bus Set Aside for Small and Medium Air Districts and does not have any requirements about what happens to replaced vehicles. For more information about truck replacement, visit CARB’s One Stop Truck site.

HVIP eligible vehicles can be found in our Eligible Catalog. You can filter and search by vehicle type, manufacturer, vehicle size, and more. Incentive amounts per vehicle are the discount that a purchaser would receive. To know what the TOTAL price of the vehicle will be, contact one of our approved dealers. Our approved dealers will work out a price with you and then on your purchase order, there will be the HVIP incentive amount subtracted from the price that was negotiated.

The HVIP vehicle catalog only publishes the incentive amount per vehicle; the total cost of the vehicle will be determined between you and your dealer and noted in your Purchase Order.

HVIP was created to reduce price barriers, enabling fleets to adopt more clean heavy-duty commercial vehicles. Created by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) in 2009, HVIP provides point-of-sale discount vouchers that reduce the purchase cost of vehicles operated in the State of California. HVIP vouchers make zero-emission and Low NOx buses and trucks as affordable as their traditional fossil-fueled counterparts at point of sale and reduce prices for medium- and heavy-duty hybrid vehicles. Funded vehicles include parcel, beverage, and food-distribution trucks, transit buses, shuttle buses, and more.

The goal of HVIP is to accelerate and facilitate the adoption of low-emitting hybrid, low NOx, and zero-emission trucks and buses. These vehicles are relatively new technologies and are therefore more expensive than traditional vehicles, especially in the early market years when production volumes are low. CARB recognizes that these vehicles have the proven ability to reduce criteria and greenhouse gas (GHG) pollutants in California and aims to accelerate the penetration of these cleaner vehicles to help meet state clean air regulations and climate change goals. HVIP is part of the California Climate Investments, a statewide initiative that invests Cap and Trade dollars.

For standard HVIP and the drayage and transit set-asides, vouchers are awarded on a first-come, first-served basis unless a randomization process is needed if funds are subscribed within the first 24 hours that HVIP is open only.

The Public School Bus Set-Aside for Small and Medium Air Districts has different rules; please contact [email protected] respectively.

Funding status is confirmed shortly after submission with no uncertainty regarding securing funding, and no lengthy application or bid process. HVIP is a streamlined funding mechanism that is set up for ease of use by end-users. Dealers, not purchasers, are responsible for securing HVIP funding – fleet owners do not need to gain an understanding of the voucher process to receive the full benefits of HVIP funding. A list of participating dealers can be found in the HVIP Eligible Vehicles Catalog.

Sign up for the California HVIP e-mail list by filling out the form: Contact Us.

Please email [email protected] or call the HVIP toll-free hotline at 888-457-HVIP.

After the first 24 hours of HVIP opening, the Available Funding table on the website lists how much money has been requested. This reflects the funds based on the vouchers requested to-date as long as funds remain. All voucher participants will be notified of which funding pots are open through the website, email, and VPC notifications.

All HVIP-eligible vehicles can be found in the clean vehicle catalog. If you think a vehicle is eligible, but do not see it listed, please send an email to [email protected].

CARB recognizes that battery size is the largest determinant of battery-electric vehicle cost, therefore HVIP has simplified the voucher tables to one single voucher table based on vehicle weight rating. The incentive amounts are accompanied by voucher modifiers to support unique fleets (public transit and school districts) as well as costlier vehicle bodies. 

Yes, however the ability to combine funding sources may be considered on a case-by-case basis. Please contact [email protected] for more information.

Generally, local and federal funds can be stacked with HVIP, while stacking HVIP with state-funded incentives is NOT permitted, except for public transit buses or, effective 1/1/23, fleets size 10 vehicles and smaller if the other program allows stacking, each incentive program is not paying for the same incremental cost, and the non-HVIP incentive program is not required to generate greenhouse gas emission reductions. This includes stacking with other California Climate Investment programs.

For public transit buses or fleets size 10 vehicles and smaller, HVIP will fund the remaining cost up to the maximum voucher amount after the other incentives have been applied at their maximum allowable amounts.

The total voucher amount (base incentive plus voucher enhancements), plus all other eligible public incentives, may not exceed 90 percent of the total vehicle cost for purchases by private entities, and 100% for purchases by public entities.

No, they are not. The Clean Vehicle Rebate Project provides incentives for the purchase or lease of new, eligible zero-emission vehicles, including electric, plug-in hybrid electric, and fuel cell vehicles.

A DAC is a Census-designated area that is especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change because of socioeconomic and geographic factors. HVIP provides increased incentives for fleets domiciled within disadvantaged communities. The value of this “plus up” varies by vehicle type and increases for larger vehicles, and there are other requirements as listed in the “Community Specific Incentive” space on this page.

Effective 4/3/23, HVIP defines DAC eligibility as a vehicle domicile address in any of the following areas of the map at https://webmaps.arb.ca.gov/PriorityPopulations/:

• Disadvantaged Communities (orange area on map legend)
• Disadvantaged and Low Income Communities (pink area on map legend)
• Low Income Communities within ½ mile of a Disadvantaged Community (yellow area on map legend) and
• Low Income Households within ½ mile of a Disadvantaged Community (green striped area on map legend)

Answers to frequently asked questions for Fiscal Year 2021-22 can be found in the FY21-22 Implementation FAQs.

For FY21-22, the Public School Bus Set-Aside opened for applications on March 30, 2022 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific and closed on June 28, 2022 at 5:00 p.m. Pacific. Funding for school bus purchases may still be available through standard HVIP. Please visit the HVIP Funding page of daily updates on HVIP funding availability.

The Public School Bus Set-Aside requires that the applicant/purchaser complete the initial application (Application Part A).  Once an application is approved to move on to Application Part B, the applicant’s chosen, HVIP approved dealer will be responsible for submitting Application Part B.   

You can find all the eligible vehicles for the Public School Bus Set-Aside at https://californiahvip.org/vehicle-category/school-bus/. Vehicles eligible for the Public School Bus Set-Aside will be depicted with a blue Set-Aside label.   

A predetermined list of school districts that meet the Disadvantaged Community priority criteria of the Public School Set-Aside can be found here: PSB-Set-Aside-DAC-Qualifying-School-Districts-220324.pdf.  The list was created by CALSTART to help identify school districts that meet DAC priority criteria of the Public School Bus Set-Aside. 

A Letter of Intent is required to submit Application Part A.  A sample Letter of Intent can be found here: Letter of Intent.  The Letter of Intent must be signed by an authorized applicant representative and state the applicant’s intent to participate.   

The old school bus can be any internal combustion engine using any fuel type. The following are the old bus eligibility requirements (G-3):  

• The bus chassis must be a 2007 model or older. The bus chassis age is verified by the model year listed on the DMV Registration Form.  
• The bus must be applicant owned. The bus cannot have a lienholder listed on the DMV Registration Form.  
• The bus must have a Gross Vehicle Weight Rating (GVWR) greater than 14,000 pounds  
• The bus must have a current California Highway Patrol Safety Certification (CHP 292 or equivalent)  
• The bus must be compliant with the California Truck and Bus Regulation in order to receive a full voucher amount  

The Public School Bus Set-Aside only funds zero emission school buses. Funding for charging infrastructure is available through CALSTART’s EnergIIZE project.  Check out the EnergIIZE website at https://www.energiize.org/.