San Francisco Supervisors Call for Plug-In Hybrids

February 15, 2006

CONTACT: Marc Geller 415.861.7278

SAN FRANCISCO SUPERVISORS CALL FOR PLUG-IN HYBRIDS

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors yesterday joined a growing chorus of government and industry leaders promoting the next generation of hybrid cars that can be plugged in to run for longer stretches on clean electricity.

The board unanimously passed a resolution urging city administrators to purchase plug-in hybrids for the city fleet and committing the City and County of San Francisco to support other governmental efforts to promote plug-ins.

Automakers are not yet offering plug-in hybrids for sale. Prototypes built by the Mountain View-based non-profit California Cars Initiative (www.calcars.org) and others have shown that adding a few more batteries to a Toyota Prius and plugging the car into a regular wall socket overnight increases the fuel efficiency to over 100 miles per gallon of gasoline plus a small amount of cheap electricity. If drivers don’t plug in, the cars operate like normal hybrids, getting around 45-50 miles per gallon.

The resolution ushered through the Board by Supervisors Chris Daly and Fiona Ma puts San Francisco in league with a coalition of more than 100 cities, public utilities, businesses, and public policy groups known as Plug In Partners (www.pluginpartners.org). To show automakers that there is demand for plug-in hybrids, the coalition is amassing tentative commitments, or "soft orders" for fleet purchases. The city of Austin, Texas, has already placed such soft orders for 600 plug-in hybrids.

"Plug-in hybrids are the next green step for today’s wildly popular hybrid electric vehicles. Now it’s time for the auto industry must step up to the plate and deliver the gasoline-optional vehicles that Americans want," said Marc Geller of Plug In America, a chapter of the Electric Auto Association. (pluginamerica.org) and the Electric Auto Association (eaaev.org).