Air Date: Week of April 15, 1994

Living on Earth listeners respond with their thoughts on electric cars.

Transcript

CURWOOD: What do you think? Should the EPA study chlorine? What about a ban? Call our listener line at 1-800-218-9988. Last week our line was literally jammed with a record number of calls, and our apologies to those of you who couldn't get through. We asked our listeners if they would buy an electric car. By a margin of nearly 100 to 1, the answer was yes. Here's what some of you said.

CALLER: My name is Gilbert Zaccaro. I'm calling from North Bend, Oregon. About the electric cars, yes I would buy one as long as they were reasonable. I'm also the chief of police here in North Bend, and I'd like to have them in my fleet.

CALLER: My name's Dave Ostergrund, and I'm in Morgantown, West Virginia. I think we need to think very cautiously about the unseen costs of plugging your car into a wall socket. I'm worried about producing electricity from either hydropower, which uses up rivers, or coal, which still puts things into the air.

CALLER: Would I buy an electric car if they're readily available? I certainly would. There's nothing I'd like better than be able to start up my car in the morning, get out for a second, and still be able to hear the birds singing. I would buy it in a minute, assuming I could afford it. There's the catch, probably.

CALLER: I'm a demolition contractor and I put about 200 miles on my vehicle every day, and once they can do that and go at a reasonable speed, you know, between 50 and 60 miles per hour, sign me up and I'll pay twice as much to get a clean, quiet car that doesn't hurt the environment.