Cash for Clunkers money should go to plug-in hybrid conversions

(Photo: Jim Motavalli)

The following is a guest post by Seth Leitman, editor of the TAB Green Guru Guides.

PHEVs need to be the standard for hybrids.

We can make electric cars out of clunkers. Conversions can be the cheapest and greenest way. Look, get rid of the engine, use the body, get it tricked out, use it around town. No gas, no oil.

This talk about coal and the like. Look, if you take a clunker and you make it electric, gram for gram of pollution, electric is by far the choice just based on the numbers alone.

If you make it more a renewable grid (which the current climate is moving towards in Copenhagen and the Obama administration) we are even cleaner per car. Anyone who tells you different is definitely selling you a bag of goods.

All this talk about what to do from every alternative-fueled vehicle forgets the fact that a PHEV biodiesel vehicle is OK with me and more fuel efficient than gas.

Electric cars rock. This is reality. Even Rush Limbaugh figured it out, and I am not calling him a bad name or an evil person; he is just right of center. However here is the trick -- he, like everyone that places their butt in an electric car or a PHEV gets, electric cars rock. They are the gold standard and anyone who tells you differently is selling you a bridge from a man who lives in a trailer down by the river (ah Chris Farley; I do miss him).

This whole idea about the Volt being a failure and the PHEV for Toyota is a low-range PHEV because of batteries, blah blah blah. We all know what's up, right?

It doesn't make sense that we just allow this to occur. I recently got really, really confused about how to handle these issues on the EV game AGAIN. So my friend Steve Monaco just put it to me best, be YOU cause nobody else will. He is right so here we go.

The PHEV is simply plug in play. A123 Systems already has kits and the batteries. Now GE owns a piece of them and there are dealerships in most states to convert our hybrids (the second-version Prius, not others, we'll get into that one later) to plug-in hybrid electric cars (PHEV). So why do we not give stimulus cash to people to convert their cars to PHEV? It's simple, it's easy. Instead we create forms and processes that make it really, really difficult for the guy who wants to do his part and save some cash while he is at it.

No, it goes to the big companies. The big banks. What about small business? We call it the backbone of the American Way but we just get the shaft on the backend every single time. However, it was a pleasure to see Fisker Automotive get federal monies and that Tesla has added the Model S. It shows that change is not about hope, it's about reality. The reality is that money needs to go to a car company, you give it to them. Now the car company can give us what we want. An electric car. A plug-in hybrid electric vehicle kit.

Yet, the obstacle is money to the actual driver. The person who needs to convert that Prius or Ford Escape hybrid or Honda Civic (yes I know there is supposedly no kit that can be created for a Honda Civic hybrid but come on, we can and we should create one; get real).

Let's do this people. Wake up and let's get government to give us a real stimulus, not just stimulus (if ya know what I mean ;-).

Seth Leitman blogs at Green Living Guy, where this article originally appeared. Check out the new book he edited Build Your Own Electric Motorcycle. Also by Seth Leitman: Dispelling Four Myths About Electric Motorcycles and from Popular Mechanics: Drive Green.

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