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| | Member Nancy Gail Goebner (right) and Staffer Tommy Hayes check out a Brammo electric motorcycle. Click to enlarge. |
Have you ever had the chance to check out the new Nissan Leaf? The Chevy Volt? A plug-in Hybrid? How about a Brammo electric motorcycle? On March 16, E2 members did at the All-Electric Car show in San Francisco’s iconic Embarcadero. This exhibit was a joint E2 and Clean Tech Group collaboration to spotlight electric vehicles and services (including a charging station) while allowing the public to take an early look at some technologies coming to the driveways of America.
The Electric Car Show provided a fun and interactive venue to talk to the public about policies that will help spur the next generation of clean, low-polluting vehicles, some
40 of which are scheduled for production or will already be in production in the next 5 years.
Some E2 members may remember that California’s passage of AB
1493 (Pavley Clean Car Law), whose vehicle efficiency standards were finally allowed in 2009 after years of federal debate, marked one of the E2’s first successes, and continues to be a hallmark of E2’s work.
More efficient vehicle standards provide savings for consumers, who are likely to be paying
$5 per gallon of gas in the near future; additionally, California is home to many electric vehicle companies, which have helped California green jobs grow by
5% even while total employment fell 1%. E2 hopes that legislation and regulation supporting clean cars will allow California, and more broadly the United States, to remain competitive if not lead the rest of the world in green jobs.
Fuel efficient vehicles, including the ones on display March 16, are also becoming more and more affordable. To the pleasant surprise of many of the attendees of the show,
a tax credit, and proposed cash rebate, for consumers reduces the price of these cars by $7,500. Some motorcycles, such as the Brammo motorcycles that were on show, are already cost-competitive, costing between $9,000-$14,000 depending on the model (for comparison, many Harley Davidson motorcycles are priced in the $8,000-$15,000 range).
In part because of their popularity, companies have also started to diversify the types of electric vehicles that consumers can buy. These cars are generally grouped into two separate categories: hybrid electric vehicles and plug-in electric vehicles. The Toyota Prius, a car which runs on gas and a self-charged battery, falls into the first category. Plug-in electric vehicles, which can be either full-electric vehicles (Nissan Leaf) or partially electric vehicles (Chevy Volt), as the name would imply, require re-charging stations. Full-electric vehicles do not have traditional fuel tanks while partially electric vehicles run on a combination of traditional fuel and electric charge.
E2 co-sponsored this event as part of a larger multi-organizational
California Clean Cars Campaign to promote a fuel standard of 60 mpg by 2025 (building off the current 35 mpg by 2016 law – a law which was first implemented in California and later carried to the federal level). The California Air Resources Board, California’s air regulatory agency, will be considering updates to the Clean Cars Program later this year. E2 will continue to work toward clean vehicle policies that are economically and environmentally sound.
E2 would like to thank E2 member and clean car advocate, Felix Kramer, who was on hand to show off his Nissan Leaf.
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