Electric Fleets Heading to Oregon
At the same time the US Congress considers giving the big three automakers an SUV hangover cure, Nissan has chosen Oregon as one of a handful of sites to roll-out and mass-market zero-emission electric vehicles. From the Oregonian:
"Details -- such as numbers of cars and their costs -- were still being negotiated even as Kulongoski drove a prototype Nissan electric vehicle in Japan this week. The program is another green feather in the governor's cap as he prepares to visit a company Friday developing electric cars in China.
'Our goal is mass-marketing vehicles across the U.S. and globally' in 2012, said Nissan's Perry. 'We all believe that we'll be mass-marketing in Oregon much faster than that.' "
The roll-out is expected to begin with government and commercial fleets. What do you think Multnomah County, are you ready to go electric?
Update: Here's a little inspiration to get you jazzed about Electric.
Posted on November 20, 2008
Comments
(Note: Comments are the views of their authors, and no one else.)
Posted by: Terry Parker - December 2, 2008 10:16 PM
Ahh yes, let’s subsidize all the foreign auto manufacturers with taxpayer funded give-a-ways and tax credits, dump “the backbone of American manufacturing” (as Barack Obama described it) in the toilet and just tell the millions of people that are employed in the domestic auto industry or have auto industry related and trickle down jobs to just take a holiday or find employment elsewhere. Why not just forget about buying anything local, buying from domestic manufacturers that support American jobs and send all the manufacturing jobs overseas. That is no less sarcastic than your term, “an SUV hangover cure”. All the Japanese auto manufactures also have heavily invested in large Pickups and SUVs. That’s what American families and consumers were buying for the last couple decades or so until gas prices excessively spiked. It is however the domestic large sized vehicles that get better gas mileage than do their foreign competitors. Furthermore, itsy-bitsy teeny-weenie little cars do not fit the needs of most families or people that need vehicles with cargo capacity. Maybe if that streetcar line is built on Grand Avenue next to the Multnomah County Headquarters Building, it should be built using hand shovels, pick axes and bicycles or tiny little electric vehicles with dump trailers instead of diesel powered backhoes and dump trucks.
There is some real hypocrisy by Governor Kulongoski and those who agree with him in that on one hand he is courting auto manufacturers from Japan and China to sell their cars in Oregon, while on the other hand telling Oregonians to buy local products. Furthermore, Kulongoski himself travels around in a full sized luxury sedan at times accompanied by a full sized SUV. The Governor is not only selling out the American manufacturers and sending American jobs overseas, but he is also obviously full of double standards - one standard for the affluent so they can maintain their high and mighty ivory tower elitist lifestyles, and another socialistic applied standard for the rest of the people which includes taking away the vehicle choices of the working class and mandating by pricing them out of the market with tax codes they use vehicles that do not in reality fit their needs. To adhere to his own rhetoric, the Governor himself, immediately needs to be the person traveling around in an itsy-bitsy teeny-weenie little car. Moreover, taxpayers should not be subsidizing imports from overseas with a $5,000.00 tax credit at the expense of American jobs.
The government, be it Federal, State, County, regional or City ought to be supporting domestic owned companies by only purchasing their products, and thereby keeping more taxpayer dollars in the US.
Posted by: Sharon - December 5, 2008 11:51 PM
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Sharon
http://www.autoloans101.info