Peter Buys an Electric Car
I consider myself a reasonable man. As such I tend to expect others to behave with a modicum of reason and common sense. Especially those with power.
It was with this perspective in the spring of 2001 that I watched in shock as 30 years of environmental protection were being methodically dismantled. From the Clean Air Act to the Clean Water Act to global warming initiatives--you name it, it was being killed. As my shock plummeted into a sense of powerlessness, my gaze drifted past the porch rail and landed with a thud on our family car. A big, fat, gas-guzzling SUV. Just sitting there taunting me.
Like a slap I realized I was one of them. The UNreasonable ones. So I made a decision. A radical decision. I decided to go electric. I had seen those sleek, sort of George Jetson EV1s shoot by me with surprising speed on the freeways. I thought, fine, I'll get an EV1. But as I lifted the phone to make the call, I had no way of knowing that this simple, reasonable act was my first step into the electric car wars.
In 1990, California found itself in danger of losing federal highway funds if it couldn't find a way to meet air quality targets set by the Clean Air Act. As the California Air Resources Board searched the hazy landscape for relief, its eyes landed on a prototype electric car coming out of GM called the Impact, to which Johnny Carson cracked, "What's next, the Ford Whiplash?" So the air resources board proposed a mandate that by 1998, 2% of cars sold in California would be zero-emission vehicles. By 2001 that would increase to 5%. And by 2003 a whopping 10% of all new automobiles sold in California would be emission free.
GM's first response was to dive in. The company committed millions of dollars and teams of designers and engineers, who emerged six years later with a sleek rocket ship of an electric car renamed the EV1. It then set out in search of a sales team, one that was not only good at selling cars, but that had the patience and passion to educate an interested but suspicious public. It ended up with a group of men and women in their 20s who were almost all single, determined and enthusiastic about the electric car. GM titled them, rather dryly, "EV specialists." By the time I met them five years later, they could be more aptly called "the Subversives." They were battered and bitter, but fighting with almost religious fervor against GM, the company that had recruited them, for the survival of the EV1.
