What do Silicon Valley’s leading business organization, the Rainforest Action Network and California’s largest utility have in common? They’re teaming up to pressure automakers to produce plug-in hybrid vehicles as a way to fight global warming and reduce U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil. The Silicon Valley Leadership Group and its new allies in Plug-In Bay Area got together yesterday in Palo Alto to launch a campaign to get companies to place "soft orders" for plug-in hybrids, or PHEVs, to show Toyota (TM), Honda (HMC) General Motors, (GM), Ford (F) and other auto manufacturers that demand exists for cars that can get 100 miles to the gallon by using a rechargeable battery that extends the vehicle’s ability to run on electricity. SVLG’s membership roster includes tech powerhouses and green-leaning companies like Google (GOOG), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Yahoo (YHOO). "The specific action we are taking is to promote PHEVs among our 210 member companies, urging them to support these efforts to accelerate the commercialization of plug-in hybrids through ‘soft’ fleet orders, employee incentives, education, demonstration projects, and support of favorable legislation," SVLG spokesman Duffy Jennings told Green Wombat. So far, the Bay Area cities of Berkeley and Alameda as well as Marin County have placed soft orders – commitments to buy – for 160 fleet PHEVs, according to Plug-In Bay Area. (Yes, I know, that’s a shocker.) That might not get Detroit’s attention but it may be harder to look the other way if thousands of soft orders starting coming in from Silicon Valley. Plug-In Bay Area is part of the national Plug-In Partners campaign.
Green Wombat happened to watch Who Killed the Electric Car? last night and was struck by just how much things have changed since GM sent the last all-electric EV1 to the junkyard 
in 2005. The EV1 owed its birth in the 1990s to a California regulatory agency – the
California Air Resources Board – which mandated that 10 percent of cars sold in the Golden State be zero-emission vehicles by 2003. General Motors offered the EV1 for lease in California while it and other automakers fought to scrap the zero-emission rule. They succeeded and GM then refused to renew the EV1 leases, claiming there was no consumer demand for electric cars despite the EV1’s vociferous fans. The movie’s conclusion: the auto industry, Big Oil, the government and indifferent consumers were guilty of killing the electric car.
Flash forward to today. Environmentalists, tech companies and electric utilities like PG&E
(PCG) – a member of Plug-In Bay Area – are banding together to create the market for plug-in hybrids first, pre-empting the inevitable arguments from reluctant automakers that there’s no demand for such vehicles. After all, it’s much easier to argue against Big Government and "unfair regulation" than it is to to fight your own potential customers and the free market.
Green Wombat 
The Silicon Valley companies would do better spent their efforts to come up with ways to get everyone to drive more sensible cars. Pluggable hybrids are a diversion.
Pluggable Hybrids will only move current hybrid owners to pluggables. What is really needed is to move SUV and full & king-cab pickup truck drivers to something less unreasonable like full size sedans. This will probably yield a bigger savings in oil and reduction in pollution than bringing pluggable hybrids to market.
In Texas at least, its seems the fastest growing vehicle segment is diesel pickups. There must be 20 new diesel pickups now in my neighborhood in just the last two years. I see them on the streets everywhere. This is not good for air quality, saving oil or the environment in general. They make my neighborhood smell like a truck stop. I don’t like the fact that I have to breathe their cancer causing soot either. The the most idiotic thing is that these large vehicles are simply used as commuter cars to get from home to the office. A Honda Civic would be more than adequate for the diesel pickup drivers. I see very few diesel pickups used as work trucks.
BTW, I am the first and only hybrid (Prius) owner in my neighborhood. Since we would need replace about 100 regular vehicles with hybrids (pluggable or not) to compensate for each diesel pickup, were already 1,999 hybrids behind in my neighborhood.