The Senate Energy Committee has approved a $2 billion program whose goal is to have 400,000 electric vehicles on the road in three years. The Promoting Electric Vehicles Act (PEVA) of 2010 was approved with a 19-4 vote. The approved version is a scaled-back version of an $11 billion bill first proposed in the spring.

The legislation from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee also sets in motion a $1.5 billion research program to lower the cost of vehicle batteries and connecting them to the electricity grid. The government has stated that the nations long-term goal (by 2030) is to have at least half of the vehicles in the country be electric, which would decrease foreign oil dependency by a third.