Reader Kate apparently thinks I’m hypocritical. She writes:
Living in Santa Ynez must be really tough, getting around and all with those Bently’s and top-shelf jags/mercs and 6-digit priced horses. Pontificate on in the valley of the ultra rich.
How charming, Kate! :) Let me make two quick points:
1) I drive a 16 year old car with 212K miles on it. (I’ve sworn that my next car will be an EV.) It’s likely that your refrigerator is worth more than my car.
2) It’s true that there are some rich people around here. But I believe the quest for renewables is a good deal for everyone at every socio-economic level. It nauseates me when I read propaganda that clean energy will put more people out of work in an already-tough financial climate. While it’s true that we’ll someday have a world without coal-miners, the net benefit in jobs in deploying renewable energy solutions and building clean transportation will be enormous.
Re: my piece on changing attitudes to electric vehicles, guest blogger Arlene Allen writes:
I’ll roll with you on shifts in attitude. They are, however, notoriously difficult to predict. I don’t particularly give such a shift good odds when it comes to cars….I’m not yet a believer that people will come to embrace the little ducklings of our industry such as the original Insight, the Smart, i MiEV, etc. And even if such an event happens, there will be a general disgust rather than embrace…
You bring up a good point when you mention “disgust.” I notice that some people sneer at drivers of clean little cars — as if those of us who care about our world and the well-being of those around us are weak, pathetic, bleeding hearts. It’s an interesting phenomenon. And it will be more interesting to see how — or if — this dynamic changes over time.
But speaking of dynamics, one thing that is evident to anyone who’s every driven an i-MiEV or a Mini E is that they perform like little rocketships. The Mini E has a 200 HP motor (about the size of a basketball). With maximum torque at zero RPM, the G-force when you hit the accelerator from a dead stop is absolutely ridiculous. In my test-drives of both cars, I notice that this creates a kind of fun little dynamic in the minds of both drivers when my little EV blasts past a Corvette or a Porsche.
In addition to my work at 2GreenEnergy, I’m a partner in two companies related to electric vehicles. One is the largest website on Earth dedicated to EVs — an 11-year-old website with 225,000 unique vistors a month — EVWorld.com. I’ve very proud of the work that Bill Moore, my fine friend, has done through the years in forwarding the cause of clean transportation.
Another partnership of which I’m happy to be a part is its subsidiary, EV World Associates. I’m trying to create a video to tell our story there, the first vesrion of which you can see below. You’ll see at a glance that the images are too low-res and that it needs help in a million different directions. But I think that the basic message is clear: we’re here to serve.
I compared this phenomenon to wearing fur coats. They feel good, they keep you warm, and they tell the world that you can afford the best. But they come at the expense of incredible cruelty to the animal kingdom. One morning a few decades ago, we woke up, smacked our palms against of collective foreheads, and decided that this was simply not acceptable behavior for civilized people.
I believe the same epiphany is right around the corner in transportation. Here’s the video.
I started to write a blog post on this subject: how our appreciation for clean energy will cause a shift in our relationships with the cars we drive. Then I decided to make short video out of the concept. I hope it’s of some value.
I encourage readers who may be interested in electric transportation to sign up for Paul Scott’s blog. Paul is a spokesperson for Plug-In America, and one the great forces for progressive environmental policy. He also happens to be a terrific writer. I notice that he gathered a number of rave reviews to a recent post in which he concluded:
I don’t I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait till the day when it’s rare to see an internal combustion car. At some point, they’ll be anachronistic reminders of a day when people didn’t think twice about spewing poisons into the common airshed. Like smoking in line at the grocery store, you won’t believe people used to do it everywhere.
I responded:
Paul, I agree with the others — you really are one of the great writers on the subject. For what it’s worth, the analogy I use is women wearing mink coats — all the rage in the mid-60s, but completely gone from our culture a few years later, when we all gasped in the collective recognition that it was simply wrong. And this is exactly what I expect will happen with internal combustion engines: they will become regarded as something we used to do – something that no longer has a place in our world.
I happen to be looking through an issue of Car and Driver yesterday and noticed their discussion of the EPA’s struggle to measure and report MPG ratings for plug-in hybrids. Apparently, there are people who fail to realize that this is a completely meaningless number. Those who never exceed the battery-only range never need gasoline, and thus experience an infinite number of miles per gallon. Those who never charge their cars experience whatever number is associated with the size and efficiency of the internal combustion engine as it operates their car, given its weight, wind resistance, etc. Of course, most people will experience a number in between – say between 100 and 1000.
But is that really helpful? Can’t we just note that this is metric that doesn’t apply? I had a friend in college who would ask, “How long is a piece of string?” and “Is it shorter to New York, or by car?” It seems to be that the people seriously pursuing MPG ratings for the Chevy Volt and the Fisker Karma are asking questions that have no more meaning than that.
Re: my piece on changing attitudes to electric vehicles, guest blogger Arlene Allen writes:
In addition to my work at 2GreenEnergy, I’m a partner in two companies related to electric vehicles. One is the largest website on Earth dedicated to EVs — an 11-year-old website with 225,000 unique vistors a month — 
Yesterday, I wrote a post featuring a 
I happen to be looking through an issue of Car and Driver yesterday and noticed their discussion of the EPA’s struggle to measure and report MPG ratings for plug-in hybrids. Apparently, there are people who fail to realize that this is a completely meaningless number. Those who never exceed the battery-only range never need gasoline, and thus experience an infinite number of miles per gallon. Those who never charge their cars experience whatever number is associated with the size and efficiency of the internal combustion engine as it operates their car, given its weight, wind resistance, etc. Of course, most people will experience a number in between – say between 100 and 1000.
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