Back to FT Energy Source homepageFor years, Dale Brooks has confined most drives in his electric vehicle to quick neighborhood trips around his Houston home.
An obsolete USÂ law has long limited the speed limit for neighborhood electric vehicles at 25 miles per hour. They can only go faster in states that adopt their own laws overriding the federal one.
Texas has finally joined their ranks. As of September 1, even neighborhood electric vehicles will be able to drive up to 45 miles per hour. In a state like Texas, criss-crossed by highways, that is key to promoting the use of this clean vehicle.
For people like Mr Brooks, the law is long overdue.
As president of the Houston Electric Auto Association, he has made promoting the electric vehicle his passion.
Mr Brooks believes the bailout of US automakers is the perfect platform from which to speed the development of electric vehicles in this country. He is tired of having to rely on automakers in Canada and China to feed his passion.
A growing number of Americans are keen for home-grown innovation. In the past two years, group memebership in the Electric Automobile Association has more than doubled, from about 700 members to 2000. Plug In America, an electric vehicle advocacy group, has gone from zero to 10,000 members. And in Houston, the energy capital of the world, where oil has for decades led the local economy, there are 55 members.
Rick Ehrlich recently opened Houston’s first all-electric car dealership, Houston Electric Cars Corp, to capitalize on what he expects to be a move into the electric vehicle. While sales have been slow, he is confident the law change will generate interest.
Imagine having one car that costs $12 per month for the extra electricity you use, but nothing else.
Indeed, it is a comforting thought. But it is one Detroit automakers have to carry through. With the speed limit for electric vehicles opening roads across Texas to electric vehicle advocates, public pressure on Detroit to produce economic and safe electric vehicles from the oil capital of the US might begin to build.
