GM will soon launch the Volt. Nissan will have a production vehicle ready in 2010, Pres. Obama was in Indiana earlier this week distributing R&D contracts to speed the process up.
So years after GM killed its exciting electric cars and literally scrapped them in the desert to protect the supremacy of its gas-guzzling SUV fleets, we're getting a market-driven and government-aided transition to cleaner cars.
[Update: Nice Washington Post piece about small, upstart and niche firms getting in the action.]
I credit the Obama administration for following through on its campaign pledge to help usher in a greener economy and to directly attack air pollution.
Neither the Bush or Clinton administrations did what could have been done or moved along in this area: Clinton because he was President when electric cars were a bit more visionary, and Bush, along with Cheney, was a closed-minded captive of the petroleum industry.
Obama is wresting us away from dependence on foreign oil, a true national security and environmental plus.
Of course, the real culprit was Reagan. That's when government-funded alternative energy R&D began to decline. We are thirty years too late. Some say cheap oil helped defeat the former Soviet Union. I don't know. I can't help but think we might have avoided both of our Gulf Wars. And then there is global warming ...
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