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Florida and California

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I've been thinking about this for a while. California and Florida appear to be very active states in the arena of alternative fuels. I believe I know why California is this way (pollution, mandates), but I am curious as to why there seems to be so much interest in the state of Florida.

Thoughts on this?
 
I think all of the guess's may be right, I have been interested in alternate energy for a long time living in Florida, I live at one of the highest elevations so after the poles melt I will probably have a nice beachfront property on Florida Island. One of the reasons to supplement our energy with renewables is I live in a district where 100% fuel surcharge is allowed on my electric bill, so if I use $350 worth of electricity my bill is effectivley doubled to $700. That alone will make a believer out of you. I actually wish Tesla would put verticale wind generators on top of the superchargers, that would really make them look like they were going to fly into space. The generators would supply 24 x 7 and will probably be in some pretty windy spots along major highways.
 
Car culture. There are lots of other places where people have money and concern for the environment. I grew up in NY (right near Roosevelt Field, actually), and I probably wouldn't have considered a Tesla if I still lived there. Crappy roads full of potholes, salt and slush in the winter and tons of traffic make driving a chore in that part of the country. Florida and California both have great weather year-round, good roads (parts of SoCal are starting to age in this respect), and a large group of affluent natives who love to have nice cars. My neighborhood is affluent, but the houses aren't multi-million dollar mansions or anything, yet we have every conceivable luxury car brand in our tiny development, and many other similar developments in Florida are the same. People would simply rather spend on their cars than houses. I think Cali is very much the same.
 
Three reasons:

1. Florida is the "Sunshine State", with 360 days of sunshine per year the arguments for solar power are compelling. That tends to feed the idea of clean power and therefore EV's. There is a great deal of power company lobbying which leads to a real lack of support in the state legislature, but we do have sizable pockets of local leaders who have bought into the EV revolution. Take a look at the charge stations clustered in Orlando, Tampa and St Petersburg where the Mayors (2 Democrat and 1 Republican!) invested time and energy in the cause. In Sarasota we have a highly supportive City Mayor (Democrat) and a supportive County Commission (exclusively Republican for 40 years now). I make the political references to show that it's being driven by individuals and not by party ideology.

2. We have some of the top beaches in America (No.1 last year) and the Florida economy is dependent on tourism. The worst nightmare for many people is offshore drilling, tar balls in the sand or oil spills leaking our way.

3. Local activists. It often comes down to individuals to drive a movement and we have a variety of people who are prepared to write letters, to call and pester and badger power companies and local authorities to get things done. From this forum we have guys like Ken Stokes who led the whole plug-in day here with 50 cars, about 40 exhibitors, numerous sponsors and hundreds (I don't know what the count was but it probably ran to thousands) of visitors to come see what we were up to; not to forget guys like Larry who saw the power of collective enthusiasm and came up with the idea of the Florida Tesla Owners Club.