How an Incubator Is Turning American Ingenuity Into Impact

Jakson Alvarez, co-founder of Evolectric, outside of a retrofitted electric delivery van. (Photo Credit Masha Hamilton)

“Electric delivery vehicles make sense — lower maintenance and fuel costs for fleet companies, better experience for the truck drivers where burnout rate is high, and cleaner air for our cities. But the biggest bottleneck was manufacturing the vehicle,” Alvarez said.

“So we thought, what if we go to directly fleet owners, extend the life of their existing assets, and create a kit to upgrade the vehicles to be 100 electric? And what if we work with local garages to support the local workforce?”

This was the glimmer in the eye behind Evolectric, started in 2019 and supported by the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI), a grantee of The Rockefeller Foundation. LACI, launched in 2011 by the City of Los Angeles and its Department of Water & Power, provides pilot funding, mentorship, market access, networking, and more to entrepreneurs driving innovative green technology to communities.

“LACI was a critical partner to us at an important time of incubating and piloting,” said Alvarez. Now Evolectric has a team with more than 130 years of experience in vehicle electrification and battery engineering, and occupies a 18,000-square-foot facility that includes what Alvarez calls “the kitchen,” where the retrofitting kit is tested and perfected.

Their work, featured by the World Economic Forum, is also “creating a digital platform that will leverage data to provide improved fleet maintenance,” Alvarez said, “because every time a truck is down, that means lost revenue and more cost.”

The one-mile zero-emissions zone in Santa Monica was designed to reduce noise, congestion, and air pollution. (Photo Courtesy of LACI)

LACI has supported some 500 startups like Evolectric, and directly created 2,626 jobs. It also launched innovation “sandboxes” — dedicated spaces for testing zero-emission solutions in urban areas. These sandboxes enable startups, corporations, and local governments to collaborate, assess impact, and scale successful initiatives.

The first one, in Santa Monica, ran from February 2021 through December 2022 and included up to 20 zero-emission loading priority curb areas and designated EV charging spots, demonstrating the feasibility of creating supportive infrastructure that redirected traffic and eased congestion. Over 15 partners, including major companies like Ikea and Nissan, participated in the pilot, showing strong private-sector engagement.

Now LACI is spreading “sandboxes” in nine cities across the country through the City Climate Innovations Challenge for Zero-Emissions Delivery that The Rockefeller Foundation supports — but those “sandboxes” will look different in each city, responding to what officials identify as the key challenge to congestion and emissions. The targeted cities are Pittsburgh, PA.; Louisville, KY; Miami-Dade County, FL; Portland, OR; New York City, NY; and Washington D.C., as well as Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and Oakland, CA.

Max Yergen, Emissionless founder. (Photo Credit Masha Hamilton)

“Diesel trucks are noisy, constantly shake, and leave drivers smelling like fuel,” he said, adding that offsetting a delivery truck’s yearly emissions requires over 9,000 trees.

LACI has been prioritizing targets and developing project blueprints to advance zero-emissions trucks to replace diesel trucks for goods movement. Drivers of diesel trucks experience more vibration and noise along with emissions, contributing to a 94 percent turnover rate for long-haul drivers.

“I had an aha moment at a truck stop, and think we can use these electric vehicles to create freight relays, so drivers can spend more time at home and goods can get to their destinations more quickly,” Yergen said.

Yergen, accompanied by his dog Nico, drove the electric delivery van he created across the country from New York to Los Angeles, arriving just as the fires broke out, and used the van to deliver meals to frontline firefighters and others. “LACI has been critical to my experience from the first moments of Emissionless,” he said.

Yergen left his financing job and “took the plunge,” as he put it, because he believes that “beyond saving the planet, electric delivery vehicles can improve lives for drivers, and for those receiving deliveries.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by the other innovators.

“We want to leave this world a better place than when we entered,” said Beverley, Alvarez’s cofounder at Evolectric. “So we’ve paced ourselves and made decisions that work for the customer, save them money, bring viable opportunities for workforce development, and then reverberate through the business structure. It’s the classic American small business story.”