Chelsea Sexton, EV Advocate and Advisor

Chelsea Sexton started selling cars at age 17 to put herself through college, but soon found her passion for electric vehicles (and her lead foot) as part of the General Motors EV1 program. In the two decades since, she has amassed unparalleled expertise in the electric transportation ecosystem, including market strategy, stakeholder engagement, retail processes, public policy, infrastructure, and communications.

Chelsea led the initial creation of the Automotive X PRIZE, which has since awarded $10 million to winning teams and inspired similar prize efforts to leverage talent and investment to catalyze efficient transportation solutions.

As a Senior Advisor to VantagePoint Capital Partners’ Cleantech practice, she helped guide the firm’s transportation-related investment priorities, most notably an early stake in Tesla Motors.

Chelsea’s diverse adventures have also included advising Audi, Volkswagen, Nissan, Tesla, Chevrolet, Google, Best Buy, Edison Electric Institute, Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, California Energy Commission, and many others. On the non-profit side, she co-founded Plug In America, the largest consumer-oriented electric drive advocacy group in the U.S., and remained its Executive Director for several years.

Chelsea has been featured in a handful of books, TV shows, and films, including National Geographic’s Years of Living Dangerously and the critically-acclaimed Sony Pictures Classics film, Who Killed the Electric Car?, and she was a Consulting Producer on the follow-up, Revenge of the Electric Car. She is quoted frequently in a variety of media outlets, and occasionally writes for one of them when a topic gets under her skin.