I want to buy an electric vehicle Part 2: New Rebates in Mass.
Larry Chretien is the Executive Director for Mass Energy Consumers Alliance and People’s Power & Light. This blog...
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Larry Chretien is the Executive Director for Mass Energy Consumers Alliance and People’s Power & Light. This blog is the first in a series about the Chretien family’s experience purchasing an electric car. Read the entire series up until now in our e-book.
My wife and I have two cars, a 2008 Prius and a 2002 Prius. We would like to replace the 2002 with a new electric vehichle (EV) or plug-in hybrid sometime in the next few months. Massachusetts is about to come out with a state rebate and we would like to time our purchase to take advantage of that. With this blog and some advice from people who already own one, I am hoping that lots of us can learn together about how to compare the plug-ins on the market. This should be fun and hopefully a good way to help energy consumers (because that is what car owners are) figure out how to be economically and environmentally smart. Electrification of automobiles is one of the keys to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by enough to stabilize the earth’s climate[1].
My goal is not just to buy a car for myself but to determine which cars are most capable of going mainstream in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Plug-in cars are not about the future. We need to adopt them on a large-scale now.
Disclaimer: I want to buy a plug-in, but I’m not promising. The 2002 is running well and we may decide to keep it a while longer. We might also decide to opt for another Prius hybrid. I believe that fifty years from now, when people are looking back to today, they will recognize the Prius as one of the key products that either helped solve the energy and climate crisis – or would have if people were not so ignorant. The Prius is both a dramatic and practical alternative to regular internal combustion vehicles and it has served as a valuable bridge to even more environmentally friendly cars.
First, here’s what you need to know about my family’s situation: The 2002 Prius has just 90,000 miles and the 2008 Prius has just 55,000 miles. As you can see, we don’t put a lot of miles on. My commute from Quincy to Boston (Jamaica Plain) is 7.4 miles. My wife works from home. At night and on weekends, we mostly drive to soccer fields and the supermarket. So if there’s a family that could get by with at least one EV, it’s probably us.
Here are the factors we are considering:
We have ruled a few cars out and have “narrowed” our list down to the following:
With that, I will get back to my research. Meanwhile if you have any facts or perspectives you would like to share, please do… Let’s figure this out together.
Larry Chretien, Executive Director
This is article one in a series of articles that Larry will be writing about electric vehicles.
[1] Carbon dioxide emissions associated with electricity consumed in Massachusetts and Rhode are low enough such that when a car runs on electricity, there is a big reduction compared to gasoline. However, in our home, our electricity comes from New England Wind, so our EV would have zero emissions, just like our home’s electricity usage.
Larry Chretien is the Executive Director for Mass Energy Consumers Alliance and People’s Power & Light. This blog...
Larry Chretien is the Executive Director for Mass Energy Consumers Alliance and People’s Power & Light. This blog...
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