Ever since I took office in 2015, my goal has been to make Arkansas first.
From the very first coding tour, I have pushed Arkansas to lead the nation on computer science. Legislators who share my vision for the future passed laws that put the state ahead of the rest of the nation.
In a press conference this week, I announced that Arkansas can also be a worldwide leader in advanced mobility, which includes electric vehicles, driverless vehicles, drone delivery, and cars that travel by air. I created the Arkansas Council on Future Mobility to identify barriers, recommend policy, and suggest incentives to support the development of advanced mobility. Members of the council will search for innovative companies and create partnerships with businesses that are pushing the future in terms of transportation and movement of people and goods.
By doing this, we are laying the foundation for Arkansas’s leadership in the transportation industry for decades to come. This is another step that will not only make Arkansas No. 1, but we will be the first to create this type of council with private sector experts, academia, and government leaders.
Arkansas is home to a growing number of mobility companies such as Canoo, an electric vehicle manufacturer, which is moving its headquarters and R & D [research and development] facility to Bentonville, and Envirotech announced this week it would be opening its first U.S.-based electric vehicle manufacturing facility in Osceola.
In Bentonville, right now thanks to a partnership between Walmart and Gatik, the world’s first autonomous driverless delivery service is operating daily, without a safety driver aboard the vehicle. This is the first time that fully autonomous operations have ever been achieved on the “Middle Mile,” a term to describe moving goods from warehouses or micro fulfillment centers to a pick-up location such as a retail store. These companies are choosing to build in Arkansas because we have made it clear we are committed to striving for the future. Nowhere else in the world has this been done yet, but in Arkansas, we have achieved it and continue to look forward to what’s next.
In 1908, Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to travel by automobile while on official duties. He rode in a Columbia Electric Victoria Phaeton, an electric vehicle that ran on two 20-volt batteries that weighed nearly 800 pounds. His trip around Hartford, Connecticut took nearly four hours. Now, more than 100 years later, I was the first Arkansas Governor to sit in the driver’s seat of the next generation of transportation.
When discussing the most innovative and forward-thinking places in the world, Japan, Germany, Israel, and Finland are among those mentioned. Now, the Natural State has staked its place as a global leader as we lay the pavement for the future of transportation and mobility.
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