The Phoenix Sun

Image by PHATenergy.

Yesterday, the administration released the details of its plan — announced in January’s State of the Union address — to put one million electric vehicles (EVs) on U.S. roads by 2015.

A key provision of that plan calls for converting the existing $7,500 tax credit for EV buyers to rebates. The change is a huge bonus for buyers who would receive the cash back at the point of sale — instead of having to wait until tax time to realize any benefit.

Other provisions detailed in the report issued by the Department of Energy include:

• New R&D investments targeting innovative technologies in electric drive, batteries, and other energy storage methods.
• Grants to as many as 30 cities to encourage investment in EV infrastructure (such as charging stations) and removing regulatory hurdles.

A table included in the report shows that auto manufacturers are already planning on producing enough EVs to meet the president’s goal — if consumers buy them.

[You can read the rest of this post, including an interview with Plug In America VP, Paul Scott, at Forbes.com.]

What would Jimi Drive? (Image by AFP via @daylife)

Let it be stipulated that the Chevy Volt commercial that ran during the Super Bowl was slick and visually enticing.

Instead of going for a laugh (a la, Volkswagen), Chevy went with “We Are the Vanguard of a New Technological Age.” It was Motor City as presented by PBS’s “The American Experience,” complete with stirring music, vintage footage (recreated), and a sonorous voice-over that gives even a rather predictable script a sense of gravitas.

Ok, it’s not a bad idea, per se: presenting the Volt as the culmination of technological breakthroughs from Ben Franklin’s lighting-struck kite, to Edison’s improvement on the incandescent light bulb, to the Howdy Dowdy show (or perhaps just to television in general), to the Apollo space program, to the computer revolution that began in someone’s garage. Oh, yeah, somewhere in there, inexplicably, was what appeared to be a white guy dressed up as Jimi Hendrix playing “Foxy Lady.”

Noticeably absent from the $3 million ad was the Volt’s tag line: “More Car Than Electric.” That’s understandable. The ad is meant to convey the innovative leap the Volt represents. The tag line is supposed to reassure us that the vehicle isn’t too far out there. You don’t want to mix those irreconcilable messages.

The problem is that the omitted tag line is the more accurate assessment of the Volt.

Read the complete article (and watch the commercial) at my Forbes blog, Edison 2.0

Olivier Chalouhi. Remember that name.

Sometime this morning, a car dealer in Petaluma, California, will hand Mr. Chalouhi the keys to his new Nissan Leaf, and the young Silicon Valley tech-exec will drive off the lot and into our collective auto future.

His new car is the first all-electric Nissan Leaf sold — and delivered — in the United States.

It’s not, of course, the first EV on the streets.

The Tesla Roadster has been out for some time. And there are other limited production EVs around. What makes this different is the numbers. By the end of 2011, Nissan plans on putting 50,000 Leafs on the American road. Another number: including rebates and tax credits, the basic Leaf costs just $20,280.

[The full article appears on my Forbes.com blog, Edison 2.0.]