DIALOGUEletters
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Getting a charge out of Costco
I just read an article in the December
issue of The Costco Connection titled “Getting
a charge out of Costco.” The article says
Costco has 90 charging stations for electric
vehicles at 64 locations, mostly in California,
and it refers to “thousands of electric-vehicle
drivers on the road.” Your article even has a
picture of an electric vehicle being charged at
a Costco location in Colorado.
What model is that vehicle? Who manufactures it? What does it cost? Where can I get
one? I would not hesitate to buy a freeway-capable EV if I could just find one. Where are
these thousands of EVs you write about? I
live in California and I have never seen one.
What good is a charging station if there are
no vehicles?
Doug Smay, San Diego, California
NO. It would cost consumers a lot of money to
do so, and impact the entire U.S. economy. All
cash registers and computers, for instance,
would have to be updated, and retailers would
have to revamp their entire pricing systems.
These are just a few of the reasons not to eliminate the penny—it should be left alone!
Annette Finley, San Diego, California
Debate goes on
In response to the December
Debate, “Should we eliminate
the penny?”
Y ES. We should definitely eliminate the
penny. It has no practical purpose. Inflation
has eroded the value of our money so that
the nickel is now worth less than what the
value of a penny once was.
G. Kaye Holden, Fair Oaks, California
The vehicle in the photo is a RAV- 4 EV by
Toyota, which is no longer in production.
Toyota says that, at this time, there are none
for sale or lease. As for the thousands of electric
vehicles on the road today, that number
includes many, many cars that were originally
gas-powered but later converted to battery electric, as well as EVs built by manufacturers. For
information about new electric cars being
manufactured, as well as for help locating them,
visit
www.pluginamerica.com or www.ev
world.com.—Ed.
NO. If we did away with the penny, we would
eliminate the best tool that math teachers have
to teach the decimal system up to the hundredths place. Kids understand money at a very
early age, and dimes and pennies are extremely
useful in explaining decimal numbers.
Betty Howard, Edmonds, Washington
All mompreneurs
Y ES. I spent some time in New Zealand a few
years ago. They eliminated the penny in their
currency some time back. It was never a
problem in any purchases or payments I
made. Taxes are included in the price, not
added in after the purchase, so there was
never an “odd” amount to deal with, and
much less change to pack around. The only
time I ended up with an odd amount to pay
was at a self-serve gas station. The attendant
simply gave me a candy bar to make up what
I would have had to get in change.
James R. McClanahan, Clovis, California
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