Electric vehicles (EVs) have been around for over 100 years and despite being especially popular in the Bay Area, they’ve never quite cracked the national market. But with Tesla briefly overtaking General Motors as the most valuable automaker in America on Monday and Tesla’s more affordable Model 3 set to be released later this year, electric vehicles might be headed for the mainstream. In this hour of Forum, we’ll discuss the current state of electric cars in the U.S. and how President Trump’s policies on energy and trade might affect the EV industry.
Wall Street Embraces Tesla -- But Will American Drivers Follow?
Electric vehicles (EVs) have been around for over 100 years now, and they've become increasingly popular in the Bay Area in recent years. Yet they've never quite cracked into the mainstream market nationally. But with recent technological advances, and with Silicon Valley-based Tesla Motors -- set to release its more affordable, electric Model 3 next year -- overtaking Ford Motor Company in stock market value this week, EVs may finally be zooming down the road to the mainstream. In this hour of Forum, we talk with some experts about the current state of electric cars in the U.S. And we'll also explore the future of the industry and how it might be impacted by the Trump administration's policies towards energy and automakers.
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A Toyota representative plugs a power cable from a vehicle charging station into the side of a Toyota Prius plug-in hybrid in San Francisco, California. (Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Guests:
Joel Levin, executive director, Plug In America
Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Program at the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, UC Berkeley School of Law
Loren McDonald, marketing evangelist and blogger