Let's Go Lectric
Posted: August 2nd, 2008, 11:15 am
My first car was an electric. Well, it wasn't so much a car as a cart. It was a little red electric golf cart steered with a stick. It had three controls, the brake, the accelerator and the stick. It was perfect for a ten-year old.
My grandfather was the pro of a small golf course and when I went to visit him in the Summer, he would turn this little cart over to me. It was my ride. I would tool around the golf course on the little trails, which were dirt then, sometimes with my golf bag in the back and sometimes my BB gun.
Every morning I would get the little red cart out of the cart barn. This was a shed where we kept all of the carts at night. There was a row of chargers that juiced the carts up at night. I would drive around in the cart all day and at dark I would creep back to the barn (because the batteries were getting low by then) and plug the cart into the charger. I loved it. I was ten years old and I had a sports car.
I loved the smooth acceleration of the vehicle. And it was quiet. It felt like you were riding on air.
So, it's with a sense of nostalgia that I watch the re-emergence of the electric vehicle. With the usurious increase in the price of gas and the improvements in battery technology, electrics have become viable again. Not a week goes by without a news story about some tinkerer who has converted a Camaro or an El Camino into an electric vehicle in his garage.
The first airplane was made in a bicycle shop. This is one of the beauties of American ingenuity. The world shaking changes come from the bottom up.
I think we should all be Everready bunnies.
this is the one that I want:
http://www.teslamotors.com/
My grandfather was the pro of a small golf course and when I went to visit him in the Summer, he would turn this little cart over to me. It was my ride. I would tool around the golf course on the little trails, which were dirt then, sometimes with my golf bag in the back and sometimes my BB gun.
Every morning I would get the little red cart out of the cart barn. This was a shed where we kept all of the carts at night. There was a row of chargers that juiced the carts up at night. I would drive around in the cart all day and at dark I would creep back to the barn (because the batteries were getting low by then) and plug the cart into the charger. I loved it. I was ten years old and I had a sports car.
I loved the smooth acceleration of the vehicle. And it was quiet. It felt like you were riding on air.
So, it's with a sense of nostalgia that I watch the re-emergence of the electric vehicle. With the usurious increase in the price of gas and the improvements in battery technology, electrics have become viable again. Not a week goes by without a news story about some tinkerer who has converted a Camaro or an El Camino into an electric vehicle in his garage.
The first airplane was made in a bicycle shop. This is one of the beauties of American ingenuity. The world shaking changes come from the bottom up.
I think we should all be Everready bunnies.
this is the one that I want:
http://www.teslamotors.com/
