2009 The Year of the Electric Car

The U.S Army recently announced the acquisition of 4,000 neighborhood electric vehicles, coming in both sedan and light truck models and can charge their batteries at any household three pronged. Six Neighborhood Electric Cars (NEVs) were unveiled by the U.S. Army on Jan. 12 at Fort Myer, Va. (U.S. Army), The first six cars were made by Global Electric Motorcars, a Chrysler subsidiary, to be followed by 800 more this year. The 30-mph, lead-acid battery-powered cars are projected to save 11.5 million gallons of fuel over the next six years.

Leaders were already thinking of expanding the program.

"These are the first of the 4,000 we plan to lease over the next three years, but we have 28,000 sedans that we operate in the Army," said Army Secretary Pete Geren. "As we move ahead we will look for more opportunities to take gasoline-powered vehicles off the road and replace them with electrical systems. This is the first step. Across all of our vehicles we are looking at ways to achieve greater fuel efficiency, not just on installations which these are used for but for deployed forces."

2009 is shaping up to truly be the year the electric car is revived as models are rolling out, with this year America’s automakers getting into the race, at the North American Auto Show. Also Mercedes BlueZERO trio (electric car, plug-in hybrid, and hydrogen fuel cell) by Mercedes are now production-ready and will be turning out on the market for low Volume runs during 2010.

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General Motors EV1 TV Commercial

so who did kill the electric car? When General Moters was forced to make electric cars under California law, they came out with this ominous video to "sell" the car. at least partial responsibility falls on automakers, though we can't place all blame. The voiceover sounds so much more frightened or nervous that the intrigued or excited tone you would expect when promoting a product like this.