Another thing to think about: if plug-in electric cars catch on it will mean greater demand for electricity, less demand for gas.
About 3.2 million plug-in electric cars will be sold worldwide by 2015, with the portion of U.S. sales largely concentrated in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, and Chicago, according to auto industry analysts at Pike Research.
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While it's a larger car than the C-MAX Energi, it weighs about the same and features pretty much the same plug-in hybrid powertrain with 195 net horsepower and three EV driving modes.
That night in the Hamptons, McMullan gushed about how much he loved the silent drive of his plug-in hybrid and how stylish it looked.
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Tim Urquhart of IHS Global Insight, a research firm, reckons that purely battery-powered cars will command only about 0.6% of world sales in 2020, with plug-in hybrids accounting for a further 0.7%.
In fact the total plug-in sales tripled from just over 17, 500 in 2011 to about 53, 000 in 2012.
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Today, Enterprise offers roughly 300 electric cars (including the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt and Toyota Plug-in Prius) and about 3, 200 hybrids (which run on both gasoline and electric power) throughout the United States, including California, Hawaii, Seattle, New York and Washington DC.
Synovate gave consumers Cs for knowledge about battery cars and hybrids, and a D on plug-in hybrids.
Also, many of you may have heard about or already read a recent LEAF customer survey that Plug-In America (PIA) administered.
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Marginize also lets a user sign into its program and add a browser plug-in to see what people are saying about the pages they visit in a similar right-hand column.
My friend Paul Scott, vice president of Plug-In America, is so excited about the Leaf he took a day job selling them in California, and told me he has already moved 30.
The state has about 350 hydrogen fuel cells running around today, along with 34, 000 plug-in hybrid or all electric vehicles and 380, 000 conventional hybrids like the Toyota Prius, the air resources board said.
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At issue is whether a heart-plug procedure to repair a birth defect that is common in about a quarter of the U.S. population can prevent strokes in young people.
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If you are one of them then you can get the inside scoop about what is coming into your inbox with Smartr inbox from Xobni - a browser plug-in that looks at your email and social contacts to build a profile for everyone in your address book.
Doctors need time to make well-informed decisions about drugs, and data take months to plug through the pipeline that turns them into studies in medical journals.
The automaker had planned to sell between 35, 000 and 40, 000 Prius plug-in hybrids in Japan this year, but by September had sold only 8, 400, about 20 percent of its target.
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