History's Greenest Parade a Total Success: All 74 Vehicles Signed Up, Showed Up

SANTA MONICA—With 100-percent participation, Plug In America
pronounced its inaugural plug-in parade a total success, confident that
President-Elect Obama himself will hear the message the event’s
participants sent: America needs one million plug-in vehicles by 2012
and 10 million by 2016.

All 74 vehicles that had signed up for the 2-mile parade through
downtown Santa Monica showed up. Electric Vehicles (EVs) and plug-in
hybrid electric vehicles were included. List at bottom, followed by
speaker line up. (Plug-in FAQs & photos attached.) More coverage
here: http://arcwire.org/content/view/102/1/

“It was astounding, even for us in the movement to see ‘old-time’
RAV4 EVs—one of which had some 160,000 miles on it—parading beside
prototypes from Ford and Mitsubishi, beside four Tesla Roadsters, beside
a 50-ton truck and a PHEV school bus,” said Plug In America spokeswoman
Zan Dubin Scott. “We even had an all-electric Hummer H2. The moral of
this story is that EVs can meet any need.”

Roughly 250 drivers, spectators and supporters attended the parade,
preceded by a press conference next to the City of Santa Monica’s large
solar car port equipped with EV chargers. Edward Kjaer, director of
electric transportation for Southern California Edison, said that nobody
should think that plug-in technology isn’t ready.

“It is so ready,” Kjaer said. “The country is ready, the market is
ready, the people are ready and news flash, the technology is ready.”

Southern California Edison is testing two prototype vehicles it
brought to the parade: a Ford Escape PHEV and a Mitsubishi iMiEV.

Here are the vehicles that attended the parade:

Made to be EV or PHEV:

• 40 Toyota RAV4 EVs
• 4 Tesla Roadsters
• 1 Solectria
• 1 Balqon 50-ton truck
• 1 eBox by AC Propulsion
• 1 PHEV school bus by IC Enova
• 1 PHEV Dodge Sprinter Van
• 3 Zero Motorcycles
• 1 Brammo
• 1 prototype PHEV Ford Escape (in testing at SoCal Edison)
• 1 prototype Mitsubishi iMiEV (in testing at SoCal Edison)
• 2 Phoenix SUTs
• 1 SolarCity SolarTaco (only gas car, affixed with solar panels)
• 2 Vectrix
• 2 Chevy S-10s

Conversions, All EV except where stated:

• 3 PHEV Prii, converted by Plug In Hybrid/Andy Frank, Plug In Conversions Corp and EnergyCS
• 1 Jeep by REVConversion
• 2 Porsche
• 1 VW Jetta by ACP
• 1 Ford Escort
• 1 Hummer H2 (all-EV)
• 1 Miata
• 1 Geo Metro
• 1 Suzuki

Here is the speaker line up from the event:

• Chris Paine, director, “Who Killed the Electric Car?”
• Ed Kjaer, director of electric transportation, SoCal Edison
• Kevin McKeown, Santa Monica City Councilman
• Jordan Howard, Youth Leader of Green Ambassadors
• Sen. Fran Pavley, California state senator
• Paul Scott, Plug In America co-founder/board member

Plug In America is leading the nation’s plug-in vehicle movement. The
nonprofit organization works to accelerate the shift to plug-in
vehicles powered by clean, affordable, domestic electricity to reduce
our nation's dependence on petroleum and improve the global environment.
For more information: http://www.pluginamerica.org.

Attachments

(click to enlarge)

Zan Dubin Scott
ZDS Communications
O: (310) 392-1130 C: (310) 383-0956
F: (310) 392-1318
http://www.zdscommunications.com