With Gas at $4/Gallon Average, Plug In America Calls on Americans to Demand Electric Cars

Electric Car Advocacy Group Urges Americans to Call the Auto Companies and Demand Electrics

EL SEGUNDO, CA - June 9, 2008: As gas hits $4 a gallon nationwide, Plug In America (PIA) calls on citizens from coast to coast to demand that automakers manufacture Electric Vehicles (EV) so that they can dump the pump.

“Call Toyota, call GM, call Ford, call them all and tell them that you won’t buy another car until it can be plugged in and charged with electricity,” said Linda Nicholes, president of PIA, the organization leading the nation’s electric car movement. “Americans must demand the choice to drive cars that run on cleaner, cheaper, domestic electricity.”

In fact, Nicholes pays the equivalent of 83-cents per gallon of gas to drive her zero-emission EV, in a comparison made with U.S. Dept. of Energy data. Furthermore, because EVs have motors with scant moving parts instead of engines, the Anaheim, CA resident has not once paid for parts, maintenance, a tune up or an oil change in 66,000 miles of driving. She has never had to hook her car up to the gas pump.

Some 20 auto companies are developing all-electric or plug-in hybrid electric cars. Even where such cars are charged with electricity produced by older, dirtier coal plants, they emit fewer greenhouse gasses than gasoline vehicles, according to a 2007 study by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Electric Power Research Institute.

Americans, however, must make it abundantly clear that we want a more environmentally responsible form of transportation and that that there will be a vast market for electric cars. Thousands of EVs were crushed by Toyota, GM and other automakers in the early to mid-2000s as portrayed in the documentary, “Who Killed the Electric Car?” And consumers, the award-winning film concluded, were among those guilty of the crime.

Plug In America has published a list of major auto companies and appropriate phone numbers on its website at http://www.pluginamerica.org/action.shtm and encourages Americans to take action now.

“We must not let promises to produce EVs vaporize like the distant memory of $2-per-gallon gas,” Nicholes said. “Taking this stand is also boldly patriotic because the money we spend on electricity stays here at home. It strengthens our own economy, not the cold blooded regimes of rogue terrorists abroad.”

Gasoline rose to a national average of $4 for the first time, motorist group AAA reported Sunday. The price is far higher in many cities across the country.

Plug In America is a California-based nonprofit organization that advocates the use plug-in cars, trucks and SUVs powered by cleaner, cheaper, domestic electricity to reduce our nation's dependence on petroleum and improve the global environment.