A car-counting game designed to keep kids occupied on a long highway drive turned into an object lesson in how quickly and widely plug-in hybrids are going mainstream in southern California, reports correspondent Kyle Field at CleanTechnica.
“I’ve convinced my kids that counting plug-in cars on the highway is a game,” Field writes. “it’s actually quite entertaining, since there’s a sufficient quantity of them to keep us on our toes while still not so common as to overwhelm us…but that’s starting to change.”
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The 78-mile road trip to Field’s in-laws takes 90 minutes to four hours, depending on traffic, and just a few years ago, those visits “used to net game-winning scores in the teens,” he writes. “Then we hit a milestone at 50 last year, which we were extremely proud of…then, on our recent trip, we hit 68, but we knew there were more out there that we just couldn’t identify.”
On one level, it’s just a game. On another, “this is huge, folks,” he writes.
“This is a critical point in the journey towards electrifying transportation, the point where plug-in vehicles go mainstream. This is the point where my former co-worker, who’s now driving two hours each way to work, started with a Prius but then upgraded to a Volt, because it just makes sense. This is the point where people are switching to the technology en masse because it’s simply better on just about every level.”
Even if it means Field’s kids have trouble spotting the “normal-looking” cars that they could and should be adding to their electric and hybrid vehicle count.
