OverviewSherry Boschert is a reporter, writer, and organizer, and currently is the San Francisco Bureau Chief for International Medical News Group. She has published more than 2,000 articles in her 27-year career as a journalist, and in 2006 completed her first non-fiction book: Plug-in Hybrids: The Cars that Will Recharge America (New Society Publishers, Fall, 2006).
“If I was going to pick three ways that people can become more environmentally responsible in their transportation:
“I ride my bicycle most places, even in hilly San Francisco. I have a bicycle and a battery-assisted bicycle, because it’s a little known fact that the older you get, the bigger the hills get. Ride a bike, take the bus, take the train – any of that. Walk when you can.
“There are a number of myths that people have when you talk about plugging in cars.
“It’s just the opposite. You never have to go to a gas station. And once you don’t have to go to a gas station, you never want to go back.
“Golf carts aren’t powerful, and we need cars to tow boats and drive through floods and things like that. Electric drive is actually more powerful in terms of acceleration than gasoline cars. Plug-in cars can out-drag Porsches, Lamborghinis, you name it. So power is not the issue.
“Our dependence on petroleum is so unhealthy in so many ways, both individually and for the world. In the United States, one third of the greenhouse gases that we produce comes out of vehicle tail pipes. Another third comes out of power plant smokestacks, so we need to clean them both up simultaneously.
“It just so happens that the quickest way to clean up cars is to plug them in, because even on the current grid, it’s cleaner than gasoline. But once we start producing more electricity from cleaner sources, like solar and wind, it just gets cleaner and cleaner, while gasoline gets dirtier.
“Individually, people may think it’s some kind of compromise to have to plug in a car and drive on electricity instead of being able to stop for gasoline when they want to. It’s really not. It’s kind of liberating. You no longer have nasty stuff coming out of your tailpipe. You’re no longer doing oil changes. We’re no longer feeding money into the countries that control the oil and petroleum, many of whom don’t particularly like us.
“So, it liberates the country, it liberates individuals from polluting and leaving a nasty legacy for our grandchildren. There is no real downside to driving on electricity.
“The only downside people have found with all electric cars is the range. How far can you go before you need to plug in? And although fast chargers do exist, so it could be just like pulling into a gas station and charging very quickly - that involves installing a whole new infrastructure.
“Rather, what we’ll see are the plug-in hybrids where you just plug in overnight while you’re sleeping, you drive most of the time on electricity, but you have a fuel tank as a back-up for long distance. And that can be biodiesel, E85 Ethanol, whatever we come up with that’s the best option in terms of liquid fuels.”
