The Wall Street Journal reports that GM is working with many regional electricity providers to guarantee a smooth transition for the Chevy Volt. If there's no electricity available to support a lot of these cars, it will be a colossal failure.
Heretofore, the government has offered income tax rebate incentives to support U.S. consumers' purchases of hybrid vehicles.
For electric vehicles, the federal government should move the incentives from the individual to the electrical grid. Subsidize electricity rates between 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. If the technology exists to detect a plug in vehicle is attached, as suggested by the WSJ article, perhaps subsidize that rate down to FREE! This would encourage people to buy electric vehicles, promote the fledgling electric vehicle industry, keep recharging off of peak times by taking advantage of spare capacity at power plants during night time hours, and help us get off of foreign oil.
That's a win-win-win-win proposition!
A separate WSJ article talks of Venezuela wanting to form a bank with oil-exporting Russia. The Venezuelans, in cahoots with Iran, are already pushing to trade oil in a currency other than the U.S. dollar. How long before they can really cut us off? The time to act is NOW!
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Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Win-Win-Win Idea For Plug In Electric Vehicles
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1 comment:
I think cheap night rates would be the way to go. I think there would be to painful of a transition if people started out getting free recharges and then were expected to start ponying up.
I heard a bit about this on NPR this morning. It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out and if it will be enough to pull GM out of the financial hole they are in right now.
We will also have to start considering ways to generate our own electricity. Here in the NE we buy a great deal of our electricity from Canada.
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