I think this is awesome. So does the man who bought them for the district, Michael Palmer. He crunched some numbers for us in terms of Richmond School District Fleet vehicles which, over the past 20 years have been getting slightly more environmentally friendly (and at the same time better in terms of cost for gasoline) but the reduction in cost (a whopping 84% if my memory serves correctly) to power one of these new cars is fantastic. Plus there are zero emissions. Unfortunately, they don't make electric vehicles (well they do, apparently, just not yet in North America) large enough for all of the Service staff to be able to use them, but they work perfectly for the IT department. Laptop and Leaf? Good to go.
This movement is great to see and makes me a bit less angry at the ending of the most frustrating documentary I have ever watched, Who Killed the Electric Car. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489037/
I watched parts of this with my class last year after first seeing it a few years ago. Essentially, the GM company made a fleet of (functioning) electric cars but then (as they were only leased out at the time) they pulled them all back in and then crushed them and ended the company's electric car program despite their being a demand for them. It just seemed totally inane. Fortunately, some other companies have seen that there is a market for them and are building them. Additionally, in Europe (where the power of gasoline does not have quite the same stranglehold as it does here) there is much more in the way of choice of electric cars. Let's start thinking like that over here, shall we?
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