I heard there were an estimated 7,000 people at the Santa Monica Alt Car Expo on Saturday. That's a lot of people to chat up, but Paul Scott, the founding member of dontcrush.com and a driving force behind Plug-In America was still going strong in the afternoon. That's when I stopped by his booth and asked him a few questions about the way the major automakers have answered the call for PHEVs, whether neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs) help or hurt the EV market, and what he thinks of the Electrum Spyder.
Scott said that GM's announcement that their plug-in hybrid might be a serial hybrid has excited the EV community more than Toyota's upcoming refinement of the hybrid Synergy drive into a parallel, but in general there is an cautious optimism about what GM and Toyota have said. The electric vehicles that are coming out in the near future are all creating a buzz, he said. And even though NEVs are limited, Scott says they help the EV cause overall. Tesla's Roadster is incredibly important, he said, because it changes people's perceptions of what an electric car is and can do.
Give Paul a listen (~6 min., 1.3 MB)
One note: Scott says in the interview that the number of soft orders collected in Plug-in Partners campaign is over 10,000. A representative for Plug-In Partners told me later that the actual number is 8,200.
Scott said that GM's announcement that their plug-in hybrid might be a serial hybrid has excited the EV community more than Toyota's upcoming refinement of the hybrid Synergy drive into a parallel, but in general there is an cautious optimism about what GM and Toyota have said. The electric vehicles that are coming out in the near future are all creating a buzz, he said. And even though NEVs are limited, Scott says they help the EV cause overall. Tesla's Roadster is incredibly important, he said, because it changes people's perceptions of what an electric car is and can do.
Give Paul a listen (~6 min., 1.3 MB)
One note: Scott says in the interview that the number of soft orders collected in Plug-in Partners campaign is over 10,000. A representative for Plug-In Partners told me later that the actual number is 8,200.
Sign in to post
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Continue