In a week where the top two presidential candidates are struggling over energy policy for this country, Barack Obama calls for 1 million plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) to be on the road by 2015. This is five years shorter than some other estimates.
Not only does Obama want 1 million PHEVs on the road but he wants them to average around 150 mpg as well. The new energy plan will include $4 billion in tax credits to automakers to retool their production plants for PHEVs.
The plan also calls for a $7,000 tax credit for consumers who are early adopters of PHEVs and half of all cars purchased by the federal government (who has the largest fleet) by the year 2012 will be PHEVs.
The plan also calls for a $1,000 energy rebate to U. S. consumers to help pay for higher gas prices and the funds for this rebate will come from higher taxes on record setting oil company profits. Exxon Mobile has just posted $11.68 billion this past quarter as the largest quarterly profits ever by any U. S. corporation.
Earlier this week I had talked about how the city of Portland, Oregon was getting ready for the influx of PHEVs by installing recharging stations throughout the city. With this kind of political will behind PHEVs you can expect to see many other cities across the nation soon follow suit and installing recharging stations to take advantage of this current political climate of solving this country’s energy crisis now rather than later.