1. Tacos
Maybe you expected our number one reason to be the progressive mindset in Austin or the city’s commitment to sustainability or the car-dependent lifestyle here… But, nope. It’s tacos. See, we tout ourselves as an honest and transparent company – and the honest truth is, well, we really love tacos and these tacos, in particular. You know what’d be cool? An All-Electric Taco Truck. We could call it: Zero-Emissions Tacos (this, by the way, is a sustainable fart joke which is very rare!) Hey Veracruz Sisters – email us for a collab!
2. The progressive mindset in austin and the city’s commitment to sustainability
Austin is chock-full of forward-thinkers and planet defenders. They have aggressive city-wide goals, and just cut 10 years off of their 2015 plan goal to have net-zero community-wide greenhouse gases by 2050. The city carefully tracks its carbon footprint, attributes 40% of it to Transportation and is ready to take drastic measures to reduce those emissions by boosting alternative means of transportation and supporting electric initiatives. Currently, only about 1% of vehicle miles are electric in Austin, but the goal is for that to become 40% by 2030. (Enter Ferry!)
3. It’s growing
In fact, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures in 2021, it has the fastest population growth among metros with at least 1 million residents. More people means more cars and more cars means more opportunities to go electric.
4. The people
Austin has the nicest, coolest, most fun-loving people in the world. We don’t have a fact-based report to cite here, but we feel that this is true in our bones. And a bone fact is a bone fact.
5. UT fotball. A.K.A: World-class Tailgates
A plethora of cowboy boots. Throwing horns. Undeterrable team spirit (Hook ‘em horns!). A strong coozie game. Lots of burnt orange body paint. Throwing more horns! Touchdown dances. Bumping into neighbors while waiting in line for the bathroom. A sense of togetherness at a time when lots of things feel pretty darn conflicted. BBQ. Winning. Losing. Throwing so many freakin’ horns.
6. Ev incentives and infrastructure
The city of Austin and the state of Texas are doing an awesome job of encouraging people to go electric by expanding their charging station infrastructure and offering EV drivers incentives:
- Texas currently has 960 EV charging stations with over 3,500 charging ports and they’re adding more as I type this. (Want to see where - check out the interactive charging station map in our app!)
- The State of Texas’ Light-Duty Motor Vehicle Purchase or Lease Incentive Program provides drivers with a rebate of up to $2,500.
- Austin Energy’s rebates for EV charging which includes special rates on plug-in locations and a 50% rebate for purchase and installation of level 2 (240V) charger (when installed by an approved electrician, for a maximum rebate of $1200 for wi-fi enabled and $900 for non wi-fi enabled location.)
7. A serious commitment to weirdness
If wanting to replace combustion cars with spaceship-looking electric ones and wanting to transform car ownership into short-term leasing and telling people the real cost before they fall in love with a car and letting people change their mind and wanting to help people rediscover the joy of driving and using words like “electromobility” is weird, than we don’t want to be normal. And if you don’t think any of that is weird, let us know in the comments and we’ll try harder because, like Austin, Ferry likes to keep things weird. Real, real weird.
Texas (and Ferry) Forever!
