Unless you were sleeping, you should know that last week, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom challenged Portland Mayor Sam Adams to the Great Electric Vehicle Race. It took no time for Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels to get into the game. So it comes as no surprise that on Saturday, July 13th, Gavin had Tesla founder, Elon Musk as a guest on his show.
California based Tesla produces the only highway legal electric vehicle on the road. Last month, Tesla secured $465 million in federal low interest loans through the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the administration’s plan to have one million plug-in electric cars on the road by 2015.
Hi, I’m Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Francisco, and I’d like to welcome you to the electric vehicle challenge being hosted by Gas 2.0.
Our city has long been at the forefront of sustainability, and we now turn our focus to one of our biggest challenges: transportation.
I believe that the future is electric, and as Mayor I hope to make San Francisco the epicenter of electric vehicle technology. To that end, we have already established a 9-point policy plan for electric vehicle infrastructure, though our efforts to advance electric vehicles are not limited to San Francisco.
We’ve engaged the entire Bay Area, a region of 7.3 million people, to make our region the cornerstone of the coming market for EVs. Not just governments, but key companies, business associations, policy advocates, and international car and EV infrastructure companies are all working together to make the San Francisco Bay Area the EV Capital of the U.S.
