While EVs were said to be abundant before the days of the Ford Model T, it was the plentiful availability of oil that ultimately led to the loss of interest in their further development.
It may not have necessarily been any greener to keep going electric at that stage, especially considering the high level of toxicity associated with batteries, but it definitely would have been a lot quieter… Besides, if the world consensus would have been for the planet to go green, then they could have done so with the diesel engine, originally designed to run on peanut oil, however, the petroleum-derived fuel we now call diesel was chosen.
And thus, it has taken America around a century (or about 3 – 5 years since mass-market EVs were reintroduced) to go from that stage to having over 100,000 registered plug-in vehicles, this being the subject of a recent contest organized by Plug in America, which is “a coalition of RAV4-EV drivers, former lessees of Honda EV+, GM EV1, Ford Ranger and Ford Th!nk City electric cars, and advocates of energy independence and clean air.”
The winner of said contest was a Mitsubishi i-MiEV buyer from Alabama, Rich Salmon, who was awarded a Level 2 charging station and $300 towards its installation as the prize.
Entrants could sign up only if their car came with a plug from the factory and was bought between May 15 and June 15, as that was the estimated period for the 100,000th plug-in to be sold. It is estimated that now there are more than 114,000 such vehicles on the road, and in a good and relatively stable market like the US, the trend should continue, especially with the advent of more affordable desirable EVs in the near future.
It is worth mentioning though that this was not an exercise of exact calculations, and there is one comment (posted three times) below the official announcement post which says:
“ETDA (Electric Drive Transportation Association) does not includes the Fisker Karma (more than 1,500 out of about 2,000 sold worldwide) in its count, and if you start counting in 2008, the Tesla Roadster should be included (between 1,800 to 2,000 sold in the US out 2,500 sold worldwide). This means the actual 100,000 milestone was passed sometime last month at the current rate of monthly sales.”
By Andrei Nedelea
Story References: Green Autoblog and Pluginamerica
PHOTO GALLERY
