He hasn't been in office long, but already President Barack Obama is clearly keen to be green. And here he is with Edison International CEO Ted Craver touring the company's Electric Vehicle Technical Center in Pomona, California---a facility in the electric utility industry that, so Biglorryblog is told, 'is accelerating the development of emerging electric vehicle and advanced battery technologies.' Edison operates the largest private fleet of electric vehicles in the nation, having driven more than 17 million miles on electric power. (And I'm grateful to Business Wire for the photo.)
Meanwhile, in case you were wondering about the vehicle they were looking at it was this 'plug-in' F-550 hybrid truck, the first of five "boom and bucket" pickups based on the F-550 chassis that will be provided by Eaton (who developed the hybrid system), EPRI and Ford to public and private utility fleets in the United States for use and evaluation.
...yes, unfortunately Mr Obama has bought into the green
mantra of CO2 as 'pollutant'. Nothing like an armada of plugin hybrids charging up via coal fired powerplants.
I totally agree with you, Andy. Electric vehicles powered by a national grid that in turn runs on fossil fuels is hardly the answer to global pollution problems now, is it? That causes just as much pollution, and the resource is just as finite; it just puts it 'out of sight and out of mind' because the pollution doesn't appear right in front of you, but rather it gets pumped out in thousands of tonnes at the power station.
For plug in hybrids to truly work, the electricity used to charge them needs to come from renewable sources, such as wind, sun, tidal power etc.