plug-in electric hybrid vehicles

With Washington’s government facing a $3.2 billion budget deficit, we need to cut expenses now. One smart place to start is with a two- to three-year moratorium on buying new state fleet vehicles and to begin the transition from oil to electricity in transportation.

Virtually every major automaker will sell plug-in hybrid or all-electric vehicles starting in 2010-12. General Motors is advertising the plug-in Chevy Volt for 2010. Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Renault, Nissan, Mitsubishi, BMW, Volkswagen and Mercedes will have plug-in cars on the road within three years. Last month Warren Buffett bought a major stake in BYD, a Chinese company that will have an electric-powered five-passenger car for sale this month.

Instead of buying state vehicles that will be consuming gasoline for the next decade or two, the governor should order an immediate moratorium on buying new gasoline-powered cars for the state fleet and make firm plans for the purchase of the coming plug-in cars that use little or no gasoline.

This article, published by the Seattle PI, mentions the Cascadia Center of Discovery Institute: Davids, a former Microsoft Corp. program manager and one of about 500 people who attended the “Beyond Oil: Transforming Transportation” conference at Microsoft this month that was organized by the Cascadia Center of the Discovery Institute, is an evangelist for “cleaner, cheaper, domestic” technology. The rest Read More ›

This article, published by the Vancouver Sun, mentions the Cascadia Center of Discovery Institute: This theme is taken up by most of the 500 or so people attending the conference, being sponsored by a non-profit think-tank, the Cascadia Centre of the Discovery Institute, which looks at West Coast transportation and development issues on both sides of the border. The rest Read More ›

Here is the MP3 link. The segment ran between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. and included several calls from listeners. The topic was moving beyond oil in surface transportation, which is the focus of an upcoming conference Sept. 4 & 5 in Redmond, Wash., sponsored by Cascadia Center, Idaho National Laboratory, Microsoft and others. Also discussed were the role of Read More ›

With oil prices doubling in a year and hitting record highs, airlines are cutting flights, charging extra for everything they can think of, or just going out of business. Earlier this year travelers on Aloha and ATA were left wondering how the airline they took while on their vacation could go bankrupt so quickly – before many could catch their Read More ›