The most striking thing about a planned electric car parade in Santa Monica Saturday might well be how quiet it is.
“Electric cars are nearly silent,” said Linda Nicholes of Anaheim Hills, a retired court reporter and now president of the advocacy group, Plug In America. “I think it’s hard not to notice. We expect cars that pass by us to make noise, don’t we?”
(Nicholes is shown below, picking up her new Tesla Roadster; all photos courtesy of Zan Dubin Scott.)
The organizers of the parade, meant to parallel an inaugural parade back east, say they’ve received commitments from the owners of 68 electric vehicles to take part, including several from Orange County. It begins about 10 a.m. at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium parking lot.
“I think people need to see real product on real roads,” said Nicholes, who appears in the film “Who Killed the Electric Car?”. “And this is going to be quite a spectacle.”
Three vehicles she and her husband own will be in the parade: Toyota Rav4s from 2001 and 2002, and her brand-new Tesla Roadster — all fully electric.
The only requirement for cars in the parade is the capacity to plug in. So a few plug-in hybrids will be in it, too, Nicholes said.
(Photo: Row of Rav4 EVs.)
Nicholes says her cars run “on sunshine.” A solar power array on her rooftop generates about twice the electricity needed during the day; she and her husband then receive credit for the extra power they’ve put into the power grid, and draw on those credits to power up their cars at night.
Nicholes said she’s only been to a gas station once or twice in eight years — when she had to borrow the Toyota Prius hybrid owned by her husband, optometrist Howard Stein.
“You know you’ve gone over the edge when it feels like the Prius is the gas guzzler,” she said.
Her advocacy group operates mainly in California, although the recent spike in gas prices boosted membership.
“The surge in gas prices really piqued people’s interest in electric cars,” she said.
And while electrics can be pricey — she said her sporty Tesla Roadster, among the more expensive, was in the $100,00 range – Nicholes believes prices will drop in coming years as more such cars are produced.
“I enjoy never having to go to the gas station,” she said. (Shown at right: Mitsubishi iMiEV, an all-electric prototype that will be in Saturday’s parade.)
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The way to solve the silence problem is to give them a recording of loud monster trucks and require them to play it on an external speaker when the electric motor is on.
I was thinking more along the lines of putting a playing card in the spokes of the wheels, to make that brbrbrbrbr noise.
Or better yet, require a man to walk before the vehicle with a large flag, shouting “Beware the vehicle, beware the vehicle!”
I really like the electric cars! Especially know that we have clean coal technology. Think about it!
Ok I wrote that last comment in a hurry! so I made a few mistakes in the spelling but you got the just of the comment. I don’t get all of the hype about electric cars when most of the power they use comes from coal fired power plants. Coal is our biggest resource for power but they emit mercury and other heavy metals into the air. To me it doesn’t seem like the best way to go.
If the power plants are already running to produce electricity we reduce pollution by using that electricity instead of burning more fossil fuels.