Ford/SunPower partnership charges EV + PV

ford-sunpower-solar-carSo, here’s the lowdown on the Ford, SunPower EV + PV deal, which we briefly wrote about Tuesday:

Basically, Focus Electric buyers will be offered a SunPower 2.5 kW home solar system for about $10,000 after federal tax credits. The system will be installed by SunPower approved installation companies and SunPower will offer financing for qualified customers who can’t afford the approximately $10k upfront costs of the system.

For Focus Electric buyers in most places in the U.S., 2.5 kW will be enough to power their FE approximately 12,000 miles per year.

Pretty, cool, eh?

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Our 2.5 kW solar EV pledge
Now, SolarChargedDriving.Com’s not going to take credit for this particular Ford + SunPower synergy, but we will say that it sounds suspiciously like the 2.5 kW solar EV pledge we developed and began promoting more than a year ago in July 2010.

What is our 2.5 kW solar EV pledge?

It’s simple: Anyone who buys a new EV pledges to put a 2.5 kW solar system on their property (and it doesn’t have to be a SunPower system, though it could be). A 2.5 kW solar system can produce 5,000 solar-charged EV miles in extremely cloudy spots in the U.S. and up to 15,000 miles in ideal solar spots — with the out-of-pocket costs ranging from $4,000 to $10,000 in most places in the U.S.

As we put it: Plugging into the sun will clean up our air, save you money — and silence the EV critics!

EV + PV getting more visibility
It’s great to see Ford and SunPower promoting what looks essentially like our own 2.5 kW solar EV pledge. They’ve certainly got a lot more visibility – not to mention more money – than we do 🙂

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Of course, we have to confess it would be nice if some of the big boys – Ford, GM, GE, SolarCity, etc. — who are starting to actively promote the synergy of solar and EV would pay attention to us – heck, we’d settle for them simply discovering that SolarChargedDriving.Com exists and acknowledging that we’ve been pushing EV + PV for just a wee bit longer than they have 😉

We’ll give credit where it’s due, too. Plenty of folks have been promoting EV + PV way longer than the two years we’ve been at it. In fact, we’ve profiled some of them on our site.

There weren’t a whole lot of these solar-charged drivers two years ago. But, with the big boys catching on to the deep appeal of EV + PV, there are going to be a whole lot more soon!

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