Plug in America’s goal in making these public service announcements (PSAs) was to educate Americans about the benefits of electric cars over gasoline vehicles. We began releasing these seven 30 second spots in November, 2010, just before the first mass produced plug-in cars appeared in showrooms. This was an entirely grassroots effort. There was no advertising agency, no commercial production company nor corporate sponsors. The professional bid for these was 7500 percent more than it cost us to produce them (that's not a typo!), because these spots were created by Plug in America volunteers and the generous donations of time and talent by crew members, equipment suppliers and post production vendors. When Plug In America needed to cover hard costs such as props, costume and stage rental and food for the set, there was an instant inflow of money from our members.

Even though an old Hollywood pro warned us there would be at least a 20% attrition rate for volunteers on shooting day – this being a non paid effort on a sunny summer LA weekend - 100% of the 60 volunteers arrived on time and ready to work, plus several more! We had three Teslas in the studio parking lot to give rides to anyone who hadn’t yet experienced the joy of being in an electric car, and several roaming cameras to take behind the scenes footage of everyone’s impressions of the day. It was a memorable shoot for everyone!

The response to the release of these spots was tremendous: the PSAs have been posted on hundreds of blogs all over the world, and been showcased by Reuters, Wall Street Journal and the LA Times, among others. Our website crashed several times due to increased traffic, and there was tremendous chatter on our facebook and twitter pages. Hulu.com requested permission to air the spots on their very busy tv and movie site, and of course we agreed! Fabio, who stars in our "Hype" PSA, did a terrific job of defending electric cars in the face of much derision by Neil Cavuto of Your World with Neil Cavuto.

These PSAs are part of our outreach campaign to help electric cars gain mainstream acceptance. This is just the beginning of our push to educate millions of drivers on the benefits of plug in cars. If you like what we did with our PSA campaign, and want to become part of the rEVolution, please consider a tax-deductible donation.

A big thank you to everyone who made these PSAs possible.

I sign off like our director, Eric Swenson does on his emails: "Be electric"

Alexandra Paul,
PIA volunteer, PSA committee

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