The electric car standards, as explained in the recent article, “Maine regulators signal support for new clean car rules” (Oct. 25), do not make sense.

The reasons are:

• Electric cars do not and will not have the range to allow people in rural Maine, in the winter, in an emergency, to get to hospitals. In the cold, with the electric heater on, the cars will just run out of battery charge long before they make it.

• If Mainers want to drive out of state, they will run out of battery charge. So they will be held captive in Maine.

• And people will buy gasoline fueled trucks to bypass the rule.

• Or people will go out of state or out of country and buy a gasoline vehicle elsewhere and drive it back to Maine.

• Or people will keep their current vehicles on the road and running, and running and running. My Hyundai and our last Honda both got to 250,000 miles and were still in good shape. Why not run them to 500,000 miles? 750,000 miles? 1,000,000? It will happen if the rule is passed.

• And if gasoline car purchase is not allowed in Maine, we will just lease vehicles in another state from an out of state company (i.e. Hertz) that will register them out of state. And then we will drive them back here.

The clean car rule would be a failure just like Prohibition was in the 1920s and 30s. People will find another solution. Mainers need gasoline powered vehicles. They work, they run, they get us where we want to go, when we need to go, regardless of the weather. We will find a way, somehow, to have them – always.

To the Board of Environmental Protection, think of us, your neighbors, your fellow Mainers, and do not pass your clean car rules.

 

Andrew Cook

Rome

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