If you’ve visited a Clear Channel radio station in the last few days, you probably were greeted by a vague ad showing the picture of an electric outlet, and the message 23 8-11.
Pretty odd, huh?
If you click on the ad, you’re taken to the Chevrolet web site. After waiting about 3 minutes for the site to load, there is nothing on the web site. The logical subject of the ad is the Chevrolet Volt. I’ll guess that 8-11 is August 11, the date for some announcement.
23 is either a reference to the price ($23k) or the number of miles the Volt will go before you need to call a tow truck.
Plugin Electric cars sound like a great idea if you’re Ed Begley – you are not constrained by cost, you live in a place that never gets cold, and you are the only one in the city plugging your car into the electric grid.
But let more than a few people start driving plugin electrics, and you’ll start seeing serious problems with shortages in electric power generation and distribution. Shortages in power will increase the costs for electricity, even for those people who don’t buy a plug-in electric car.
We’re just on the edge of seeing the unintended consequences of plugin electric cars, especially if we remain in idle about building new nuclear power plants.
Thanks for the helpful speculation with this! I saw the ad watching reruns of Lost on hulu. A very strange positioning because of the famous “Lost Numbers” which are 4 8 15 16 23 42, so only two are in common (and no 11), but still it was eerie.
The thought has occurred to me also that it might be $230, like that might be the monthly payment for the base model. If streetcars and trolley buses are any guide, electric vehicles should have a much longer life than internal combustion engines. You might have to rewind the coils once every 10 years, but unless it rusts out, an electric car could easily last 30 years. You’ll of course have to replace tires once in a while.
Here is the next problem to think about: If a large percentage of cars start running on something other than gasoline (electricity, natural gas, fuel cells), how are the states going to pay to build and maintain roads?
I found your sight while attempting to find out the purpose of the strange add I saw on Hulu.
My question on the electric cars, if they increase in usage, is the flood of used batteries. I know that they can be recycled but will they be? This strikes me as an environmental nightmare that will have us longing for the days that we were only worrying about the sky falling.
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What I think this means is that the volts are going to get 230 MPG and it is going to be announced on 8/11