There are plenty of things to be thankful for on Thanksgiving, but since our specialty here at SolarChargedDriving.Com is the EV + PV combo — and solar-charged turkey, we’ll be baking ours in an electric range oven powered by our home solar system š — we thought we should serve up a few EV + PV things to be thankful for today.
Sun. Without the sun, of course, there would be no life on earth. But, moving down from the philosophical ether, we’re thankful for the fact that cars can now be driven on one of the cleanest fuels out there — solar-generated electricity. The sun showers the earth with more than enough energy every hour to power all of our energy needs. Thank you sun! We love you — we just wish you could shine 24 hours per day. Okay, maybe not š And, in fact, with the exciting growth in solar-electricity storage methods — including vehicle-to-grid technology that taps the storage power of EVs — we don’t need 24 hours of sun anyway.
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Electric cars. Hard to believe, but it’s only about a year ago that the world’s first widely available and generally affordable pure EV, the Nissan LEAF, started being delivered in the U.S. Now, we’ve got about 10,000 LEAFs in the U.S. and we’re pushing 20,000 worldwide. And, of course, there are now thousands of plug-in hybrid Chevy Volts in the U.S. as well, many of them partially powered by solar. And the LEAFs and Volts have plenty of company on the way in the U.S. Soon, U.S. consumers will be able to buy EVs from Ford, Mitsubishi, Toyota and Honda. That noted, we’re going to give a special thanks to Nissan and GM for leading the way.
The solar + electric car combination. Nothing beats the sheer exhiliration of fuelling independence and zero emission driving and nothing helps deliver both of these more effectively than the home solar + electric car combination. Yes, both solar and electric cars could still come down more in price — and will need to do so in order for solar-charged driving to truly go mainstream. But, if you have the money up front — or even if you don’t, remember you can lease solar and EVs in many places in the U.S. — there’s no easier way to give the heave ho to Big Oil and a big hello to green driving than putting home solar on your roof and plugging an EV into the power, and sheer exhiliration, of your own personal home solar gas station!
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