As for State level gas taxes… I’ve been a proponent for years to phase out my State’s toll system and instead phase in an increase for the net revenue lost….

… this has two benefits. 1st it gets rid of the overhead of maintaining the infrastructure, the toll collectors, bean counters, etc. 2nd it saves gas and vehicle emmisions from vehicles idling during rush hour. There’s actually a 3rd benefit as well… in my State we’ve had some serious fatal car accidents at toll booths.

Instead of raising the Federal gas tax, just get rid of the tax credits and giveaways we’ve been giving to big oil/gas and use that money saved to put into fixing our national roads and bridges.

Sorry Mark, I’m a frenchspeaking belgian and my working langage is 25% english, 75% french so sometimes I forget when posting that some readers do not read french.

So in nmy posts on the plug-in Prius in French, the most important informations I was referring to were :
1. Some true Toyata plus-in Priuses are in France since september 2007 beind tested on European roads.
2. They are in the EDF vehicle fleet (EDF is one of the most important electricity suppliers in Western Europe particularly in France, Belgium and Spain).
3. EDF has developped public quick charging stations that they use in the tests.
4. They intend to report tests results in 2008 and progress towards an effective implementation of public charging stations in several countries of the European Union.

By the way to add to the french site I am referring to , this is a new one :
http://www.lecho.be/article/La_voiture_ecologique_REVA_disponible_sur_le_marche_belge.6055326
We learned on TV yesterday that the REVA is on sale in Belgium, it is a plug-in on acid lead batteries with a range of 80 kms (more or less 55 miles), with a max speed of 55 mph. Recharge time is 8h for a full charge but they sat that after 2 hours the battery is 80% charged.

It costs 14,900 € (20K US $) and a lot of interested people fear about the battery. Reva says it will use Li-ion batteries next year and they intend to build a factory in UK produce 30,000 Reva’s a year because even if people do not like the acid lead batteries, the demand is increasing rapidly especially as the second car of urban families.

I agree as well. Sorry to repeat myself, but I highly recommend “Blowback”, The Sorrows of Empire”, and “Nemesis”, by Professor Chalmers Johnson. He lays it all out in terms that even I can understand.

This may be pushing the envelope of the Volt blog, but Prof. Johnson makes it crystal clear that the issue you all raise threatens the very future of our (at least once) great nation.