America plugs in, for a day

Be it for independence, abundance, parenthood or groundhogs, Americans love a day of celebration. So it was perhaps inevitable in the age of anxiety about peak oil and climate change that some kind of national day for alternative mobility has come about.

Last weekend saw North America’s second National Plug-In Day organised, supported and run by community, business and lobby groups such as Plug In America, Sierra Club and the Electric Auto Association.

In co-ordinated events similar to Australia’s Green Zone drive events, yesterday saw more than 60 cities and towns - from New York to Maui, Seattle to Sarasota - running promotional events in celebration of EVs and PHEVs, giving a still-uninitiated wider public the chance to kick some tyres and maybe go for a ride.

It began life as the annual EV Rally and Show, a now 40-year-old event run by the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Electric Auto Association, a bunch of weekend (and doubtless weekday) engineers who’ve been toying around with this kind of thing since the hippie era.

The Silicon Valley showcased EVs old and new, on four wheels, three and two, with free rides for those happy to queue. It’s the largest single such event across the country.

In Michigan, the nation’s home of conventional auto technologies, the city of Ann Arbor hosted an EV parade starting out in nearby Saline followed by a 20km parade up the arterial road to Ann Arbor's Main Street.

In Los Angeles, the action centred on the Automobile Driving Museum, with rides on offer in all kinds of EVs and plug-ins. The focus was on giving interested people a look into electric mobility, demonstrating its day-to-day viability, quelling range anxiety and encouraging them to think about buying in.

In doing so, organisers say, Americans aren’t just getting a cheaper, cleaner ride – they’re also helping employ other Americans in more than 20 states, in an industry on the way up.

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