The world’s greenest procession of its kind, 74-All-Electric and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles paraded south on Main Street in Santa Monica during the “Inaugural Parade West: Plug In, America!” on Saturday, January 17, 2009. The inaugural parade's mission is to jump start the nation’s presidential inaugural festivities with a message for Congress, Detroit and Barack Obama: America wants plug-in vehicles, the most fuel-efficient cars ever made.The clean-car parade, coming as gas prices begin their inevitable rise again, represents the largest assembly of its kind in history. It demonstrates the number and breadth of new plug-ins coming onto the market and the continued viability of those that have been on the road since 2002. The event’s all-electric vehicles, all of them freeway-capable, include more than two dozen Toyota RAV4 EVs—with tens of thousands of oil-free miles on each—three Tesla Roadsters, two Vectrix motor scooters, one Zero Motorcycle, two Phoenix SUTs and a prototype Mitsubishi iMiEV. The latter is undergoing testing at Southern California Edison, which also will provide a prototype Ford Escape plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. A 1971 Porsche 914 is among other EV conversions. Parade-vehicle owners and drivers range from Ed Miller, an engineer with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Mars Science Lander Rover project, to Alexandra Paul, an actress and Plug In America board member, to green leader Ed Begley, Jr. Plug In America recently launched a campaign to encourage Detroit to build fuel-efficient vehicles with the billions in federal bailout dollars it has now begun to receive. The production of 10 million plug-in vehicles by 2016 by a retooled, electrified auto industry will create hundreds of thousands of new green jobs. Even when charged on today's electrical grid, plug-in cars are cleaner than the average gasoline car. They also run on domestic electricity, notes former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, a Plug In America supporter and clean-tech venture partner with the Silicon Valley’s VantagePoint. “Electric vehicles can deliver a deadly blow to our dependence on imported oil from hostile countries while addressing our environmental crisis,” Woolsey says. “A plug-in future is key to a sustainable America and a stable world.”
.
<<CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE PARADE PHOTOS>>