Gasoline prices in the U.S. are at their highest since 2008, when gas spiked to $4 gallon, with some places beginning to flirt with $4 gallon again. And many Americans are claiming, once again, that they’re helpless in the face of rising oil prices.

Take Culver City, Calif. resident Alonso Larita, for example. Larita, who the L.A. Times caught up with recently, is representative of millions of Americans in terms of his dependency on gasoline.

“You need to use your car, so you have no choice but to buy it…you’re helpless,” Larita told the L.A. Times.

Not entirely true.

Yes, things such as unrest in the Arab world, speculators’ decisions to buy, or not buy, oil, and dramatic economic growth in places like China and India are largely beyond our control.

Electric cars are here!
But what we power our cars with is not -- thanks to the arrival of electric cars.

You have the power to say no to gasoline, to leave the anxiety of spiking gasoline prices behind, to unplug from your addiction to oil, much of it foreign, and assert your fueling independence.

How?

By buying an electric car and plugging it into a home solar system.

Hundreds, possibly thousands of Americans, are already doing this – and more and more are doing so every day.

Yes, plugging into the sun requires a substantial up-front investment. Of course, it’s worth pointing out that if you’re planning on buying a new car anyway -- which we are, and you’re willing to downsize a bit, which we are – we’re getting a Nissan LEAF, but probably would’ve bought a Honda Accord if no EVs were on the market, you won’t pay any more for your new EV than for a new gasoline car.

Put a Nissan LEAF together with a home solar system and you could produce 100 percent of your own fuel!

EV+PV & solar payback
And, yes, a solar system can be pricey if you buy it outright – though, consumers in 12 U.S. states can now lease a solar system with no money down. However, the long-term savings of buying a solar system will add up quickly if you’re replacing gasoline with sunshine.

In just seven months with a 5.59 kW solar system in Aurora, Colo. we’ve saved up $1,700 worth of gasoline replacement in the form of kWh hours we’ve banked with our utility.

By the time we get an electric car, hopefully in Sept. 2011 – when $4 gasoline is a very real possibility – we will have saved up more than $3,000 worth of “gasoline”. As a result of tapping the solar + electric car synergy, we’ll also reach solar payback on our system in less than three years!

The choice is yours: You can continue to despair about your “helplessness” in the face of rising oil prices, or you can throw off the chains of gasoline dependence and plug into the freedom, security, and sheer satisfaction of producing your own “gasoline” – with a home solar system that pumps electrons directly into the batteries of an EV.

What are you going to do?

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