EV-1

Since today's media coverage seems dominated by stories focused on --

crude oil prices
climate change/global warming
ethanol production
Al Gore's weight gain (just checking to see if you are reading closely)
automobile gas mileage

-- this article in yesterday's Financial Times newspaper caught my eye:

"Lutz tries to put a charge into the Volt"

The focus of the article was on General Motors' Bob Lutz who serves as their "vehicle development officer" so he is promoting a website to gain consumer feedback on GM's new electrically-powered Chevy Volt.

This is GM's second attempt at developing an electric car with the first one being the "EV-1" which was produced in the 1990's. Once GM decided to phase out the EV-1 due to lack of sales they ".........ended up crushing several hundred EV-1s........." (according to the Financial Times)

What??? GM simply crushed these cars which could have been utilized to save Mother Earth? Al Gore was Vice President of the USA at the time so why did he let this environmental disaster happen during his watch?

Clearly I am greener than Al Gore since I would have offered GM (okay, I would have wanted to be a consultant to them so I could send them an invoice for my advice!!) the following ideas --

• Instead of crushing these EV-1s GM should have donated them to industrial arts/shop classes in a series of high schools across the USA to give students hands on experience with alternative fuel options -- "do it for the kids........" :-)
• Sell the entire fleet of EV-1s to some green entrepreneur such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (http://www.nrdc.org/voices/rfk.asp) to become a replacement fleet for some taxicab company. Oh wait, governments grant taxi cab monopolies so Mr. Kennedy wouldn't be allowed to compete with his eco-friendly cabbies!!
• Donate the entire EV-1 fleet as replacements for the cars used to transport Members of Congress around Washington DC versus the chauffeur-drive, gas guzzling Chevy Tahoe SUV recently used to transport Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi as noted by this blogger --

http://bigheaddc.com/2007/02/08/nancy-pelosis-awful-gas-problem/

Come on Mr. Gore -- how did you miss these great opportunities to use GM's products to save Mother Earth? You can surely do better since you created the Internet for us to utilize for blogging about you. :-)

Plug in, Todd