This week The Bogman heads to Phoenix to offer 1 Block off the Grid solar discounts for neighbors who go solar together. And what better city to go to! Phoenix was super hard-hit by the housing crisis. It has had 54% drops in property values, some of the worst in the nation.

So this may not seem like just the perfect time for solar Phoenix (including including Glendale, Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa) to go solar. But, there’s one thing that Phoenix residents should know: Solar raises property values!

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At a breakfast meeting for Nashville business executives, Carlos Tavares, Chairman of Nissan America, said he fully expects the company to have 20,000 reservations for the Nissan LEAF by the time the car goes on sale late next year.

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Oregon, Sonoma County, Tucson, San Diego, Phoenix, and now Seattle. Nissan has been on a media blitz over the last few months adding partners to its growing list of electric vehicle cooperators. In doing so, a clear picture of the company’s “West Coast Plan” has emerged.

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Phoenix is the nation’s fifth most populous metropolis and the biggest U.S. city without a public rail transit system (the city shut down it’s original trolley system 60 years ago). The sprawling metropolitan area has been characterized as “car crazy” and critics suggest ridership will be limited by the areas urban sprawl and grueling summer heat.

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Whichever path they choose, Democrats could be headed for a confrontation with Mr. Bush and were setting the stage for a dramatic lame-duck session

The confrontation in question is a proposal from Senate Democrats, with backing from President-elect Obama himself, to bail out the Big Three, under the premise that they are too big to fail and that if they went under, the ripple effects would be devastating. Curiously absent from the discussion, however, is the fate of a host of cleantech startups making extremely efficient vehicles powered by electricity, electricity plus gasoline or biofuels, and so forth.

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The University of Phoenix, in partnership with local Phoenix, Arizona energy provider Salt River Project (SRP), announced yesterday that they will make the largest purchase of renewable energy tax certificates in Arizona history.

The University will buy 46.5 million kilowatt-hours of renewable energy credits, equivalent to all of its Phoenix campus’ annual consumption and 27% of its more than 200 campuses across the county. It is also enough power to keep the lights, computers, and TVs going in 3,800 American homes for a year or removing the carbon emissions of 5,280 cars.

University of Phoenix is purchasing the credits from the Hopkins Ridge Wind Facility in Washington state through SRP’s EarthWise program.

As a result of the purchase, the University of Phoenix is ranked 7th on the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Top 20 College & University Partner List“.

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Well, 500-plus entries are in, and the promotion organizers are now working to select a winner. (Readers of the Arizona Republic’s Website, azcentral.com, will choose their favorites, and the top nominees will be passed along to Metro officials for a final decision.) While the top pick hasn’t been identified yet, though, some of the bottom ones have.

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Dear EcoGeek,

Who killed the electric car? Seriously, why can’t I buy one yet and when will I be able to?

Alan Carney
Dallas, Texas

Hey Alan, Much love to the people who made Who Killed the Electric Car?, because they got a lot of stuff right. It wasn’t any one person, corporation or technicality that killed the EV1. As with all product failures, it was a combination of tons of factors.

The reason major auto companies aren’t making electric vehicles look like this. First, Americans were looking for SUVs, not ultralights. Second, the technology was primitive, the biggest problem being that batteries could only take cars a hundred miles before they needed to spend hours at a charging station. Third, major car companies were too foolish to see that, in the next decade, electric cars could quickly become technologically viable and extremely appealing, so the abandoned their projects completely.

And now, here we are. Electric cars are technologically viable and extremely appealing. But no one’s done the kind of development necessary to introduce a pure electric vehicle to the mass consumer market. But it will happen. It’s just probably going to happen intermittently, by solving all three of the above problems in different ways.

Drivers will have to get used to smaller, lighter, sportier, more aerodynamic vehicles. It’s already starting to happen, and the new Prius body, most folks agree, is a very nice looking car.

Technology to make EVs more viable are being developed constantly. Ten minute recharge times, higher capacities and energy densities, and safer and more environmentally friendly components are all on the way, if not already proven. Of course, there’s a difference between a battery working in the lab, and being able to get it into a car for less than $30,000.

The short answer, for you, is that you can buy an electric car now. But you’ll either have to pay a premium for a Tesla or a Phoenix model (both companies have battery packs that cost more than Honda Civic) or you’ll have to go small, with NICE Cars or the Smart Fortwo. Or you can head to EVFinder, and search through listings for quite a lot of new and used electric vehicles.

But if you wait for mainstream manufacturers to catch on, it might be a while. Plug-in hybrids will soon (though no one has any concrete dates planned) offer an intermittent step which will allow for at least some emissions-free driving. We should see a Prius plug-in and possibly a plug-in from Saturn before 2010. And plug-in series hybrids (which always use the electric engine, but use a gasoline engine to charge the batteries (not to spin the wheels)) will offer another step toward full EVs.

But we’re going to have to wait for the ultra-expensive, high capacity, quick charging batteries to start getting way cheaper before we see any major car company embracing electric vehicles. Because if the EV1 hit the streets again…chances are, we still wouldn’t be able to get it off life support.

Ask the EcoGeek is a syndicated column provided by EcoGeek.org. If you want to ask a question, send it to Hank through our submission form.