Electric vehicles; although they are not being produced in significant numbers yet, Obama wants to add a million EV cars to the roads by 2015 and some places are preparing. Raleigh, NC is just one of the three US cities involved in “Project Get Ready,” a program to install a number of electric vehicle charging stations throughout the city.

Partnering with Progress Energy and Advanced Energy, Raleigh is paying for the cost of the installation on city property while Progress Energy is paying for the 8 charing stations themselves, the majority of the initial stations which will be located in the city’s parking garages downtown and near N.C. State University at a cost of $1000-$4000 each.

The stations are meant to prepare Raleigh for a time when electric plug-in and hybrid-electric cars are being driven by a significant percentage of drivers. Drivers will be able to use their credit card to access the stations and pay about 2.5 cents per mile to recharge their vehicle, [Mayor Charles] Meeker said. (NewsObserver)

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Part of GM’s post-bankruptcy restructuring that few people have yet to notice, is a sweeping move to China.  While it’s Canadian and Mexican operations still report through North American, the rest of the world’s operation report through Asia.

“It should signal to everybody that certainly North America is going to be important to righting the ship, but basically the bread is going to be buttered out of Asia,” said Michael Robinet, vice president of global vehicle forecasts at CSM Worldwide. “GM fully understands that, and that’s the reason why they put more decision-making capability out of Asia for their future fortunes.”

GM sales in the US this year are down 37.7% to 1.1 million while sales in China are skyrocketing.

GM’s July sales in China through its joint ventures increased 77.7% to 144,593, which the company says makes it the best July ever in its books. For the first seven months of the year, GM’s China sales were up 42.8% to 959,035, according to GM.

In early August, GM celebrated the sale of its 1 millionth vehicle in China this year — a man named Ye Banjun purchased a silver Buick LaCrosse — with a giant cake.

“Asia is the shining jewel that they have,” George Magliano, an industry expert at IHS Global Insight, said of GM.

“If you look at GM going forward, they are a smaller company, they are more refocused. If they turn themselves around and they have resources … to put behind things, it’s going to be China and Asia.” (Freep.com)

“So far, China’s growth has exceeded anything anybody thought possible,” Mike DiGiovanni, GM’s executive director of global market and industry analysis, said in July.
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An Excerpt of the interview of Sammy Rogers entitled Riding On Sunshine.

Sammy:

Well, I certainly think there are some people out in the public that are intentionally trying to mislead people about electric vehicles. One of the misconceptions they try to carry you down the road is they try to convince people that charging an electric car will put extra demand on the power grid and that, in essence, it would cause our cost of power to go up because of this.

That’s really not a true statement. We’re always told that there’s nothing free in this world, but I don’t think anybody can argue the point that sunshine is free. I don’t think anybody can do much about cutting it on or off. When it’s there, it’s there. And we can’t do much about it.

So sunshine is free. It’ll cost you some equipment costs to convert it into electricity, but once that’s recovered you have a free energy source that you can charge your electric vehicle and drive it on that energy.

We’re not bound to use oil the rest of our lives. We have other options and people have done a good job at convincing you that’s it’s not possible to do.

However, I’ve been doing it a long time and other people have, too. So another advantage to doing this, of course, if you don’t believe in global warming, that’s OK, but if you do believe in it, we will reduce a lot of CO2 emissions that are coming out tailpipes of your internal combustion engine cars.

And basically, we should improve the quality of the whole atmosphere around our planet. Now, some people don’t believe that and that’s OK. Another thing you’ll be able to do is as oil costs goes up and up, we’ll help reduce the financial burden on you for just driving a vehicle back and forth to work everyday.

Glenn:

That’s pretty significant, Sammy, because this teleseminar is being conducted in June of 2008. For those of you who may be listening to it later, gasoline prices in the U.S. have just topped $4.00 per gallon. So you don’t listen to a news broadcast or pick up a newspaper without seeing the overall effect of what increasing energy prices are doing to us individually and collectively to our modes of transportation.

The price of everything is escalating because of the price of oil.  We see this every day and it is obvious prices will  continue to rise. Actually Sammy is ahead of his time, as we said before and he’s actually living in the future today. So what do you see in the future, Sammy?

Sammy:

Well, I really do see one day that we’ll look back and we’ll say, “Why did people ever drive these internal combustion engine cars? Why did they drive them for the last 80 years? That was really foolish.” But it’s going to be a few years before we’ll look back and ask that question. I really think that’s what the future will look like. If you keep up with the news, it’s almost every day another company is telling about an electric car they’ll start producing.

Now it seems like a lot of talk and no action. And it really has been. Currently there’s really only one electric vehicle that’s available and it’s really out of range for most everybody at $109,000. It’s a great vehicle, but not great for the average American at all. So the really lower?priced vehicles are still not available yet today.

Glenn Seymour