Top executives from 13 companies including California utility Pacific Gas & Electric, Japanese automaker Nissan, smart grid startup GridPoint, battery maker A123Systems, battery giant Johnson Controls-Saft, and venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, are joining forces this morning as the founding members of a new alliance called the Electrification Coalition with a shared vision for how to transition the vehicle fleet off of gasoline and onto the electric grid.
Are these the faces of the next EV influencers? The group certainly has some heavyweights, with a combined market cap of more than $100 billion, but hardly represents the entirety of the energy, utility, auto or energy storage industries — or even just the EV sector. But most of the 13 have bet big on the nascent electric vehicle market. With the stated mission to “promote government action to facilitate deployment of electric vehicles on a mass scale,” the Electrification Coalition has released a 91-page policy paper this morning, advocating government action to boost the industry.
The Departments of Agriculture and Energy late yesterday announced they will be doling out 








