To show their plug-in passion, some people spend upwards of $30,000 on an electric car. Others – well, one, that we know of – will spend that much just to tell the leader of the free world how cool EVs are, in 180 seconds or less.
That man is our friend Paul Scott, who's no stranger to EV advocacy. A co-founder of Plug In America and currently a Nissan Leaf salesman, Scott has been involved with electric vehicles since the EV1 days that were documented in the film Who Killed The Electric Car (pictured). He announced today, independent of his job and association with PIA, that he will spend $32,400 to attend a fund raiser for President Barack Obama in Santa Monica next week. That pile of money – which is "a large percentage" of his retirement savings – will get him two-to-three minutes of the President's attention, Scott said.
Scott, 60, has written his thoughts down to prepare for the encounter. They read, in part:
What I want Obama to hear is that for over a decade, I've been driving a zero-emission electric car powered by sunlight – it runs on solar electricity generated by the solar panels I purchased over 10 years ago. This is, in fact, the reason I can afford to speak to the President. ... I recently calculated how much I've saved by paying a small utility bill, only, for these basic needs since 2002: roughly $16,000. ... It begs the question: what would our planet and political process look like if millions of Americans stopped giving hundreds of billions to polluting industries and spent their savings instead on locally-generated, renewable electricity and local goods and services.
Scott's complete article is available below.
Of course, Obama is already a plug-in vehicle supporter. In 2008, then-candidate Obama called for a million plug-ins on US roads by 2015. That goal doesn't look like it will come to pass, but it shows that Obama understands the value of EVs, despite getting $884,000 from the oil and gas industry during his 2008 presidential campaign, according to Open Secrets. We'll see how Scott's $32,400 stacks up.
