Mayor Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco, is talking to Project Better Place concerning the building of a network charging stations and computerized battery-exchange locations like the one that Silicon Valley is developing in Israel and Denmark. Likewise, Mayor Newsom is negotiating with several companies to ask to support Project Better Place develop the said project.
If ever the project materializes, San Francisco could be the very first city in America to a large numbers of electric vehicles on the road and charging stations to keep them going. Plug-In America co-founder, Paul Scott, said that the idea of mayor Newsom is terrific and even more if it happens because people like them who have been using electric cars for 5 or 10 years know that such technology really works.
Project Better Place’s top executives including CEO Moshe Kaplinsky were met by Mayor Newsom. The confirmation came from the mayor’s office. Reportedly, Mayor Newsom was impressed by the startup plan of bringing EVs to the masses so he offered his cooperation for EVs to reach San Francisco.
For Scott, San Francisco is a perfect place for EVs because it is compressed where people travel less than 50 miles per day and most of the electricity comes from natural gas, nuclear power, and renewable sources like wind and geothermal energy. However, it doesn’t make sense if you haven’t any of such cars.
Several auto makers are planning to include electric vehicles in their line up like Nissan, which is owned by Renault, plans to bring EVs to California by 2020. Likewise, BMW, Subaru, Mitsubishi, and Audi are developing electric cars to meet California’s law mandating all vehicles to be emission free. At least 7,500 electric cars or hydrogen fuel cell vehicle are expected to run by 2014.
Indeed, through the help of Mayor Newsom, the market for electric vehicles is being built. The development of electric vehicles would be hastened with the sole declaration of Mayor Newsom’s support and hopefully, other auto makers would do the same.
