Thanks to Terry G. for this article!
Michael Taylor, SF Chronicle Staff Writer
Hybrids are all the rage these days and for good reason, given that their drivers can eke out maybe 50 miles per gallon. Plug-in hybrids, when they come on line in a couple of years, will be able to go about 100 miles on a gallon of gas.
So how about a car that uses no gas and is cheaper than a Toyota Prius?
It does exist, but the catch is that it's all-electric - so it pokes along at a leisurely 25 mph, tops.
Historically, electric cars have been odd-looking things that scooted around for a while and then died away. Their latest incarnation came in 1990, when the California Air Resources Board told the automakers that by 2003, 10 percent of their new cars sold in the state had to be emissions-free.
General Motors, Ford, Honda, Toyota, Chrysler and Nissan all cobbled up electric cars and leased them to the public to comply with the regulations, then sued the state. The Air Resources Board eventually backed down, and the carmakers recalled most of the vehicles and destroyed some of them, leading to public outcries and a popular documentary called "Who Killed the Electric Car?"
Now, there's a new foray into the electric-car field - "neighborhood electric vehicle," or as it's sometimes more accurately called, the "low-speed vehicle." More of these cars are showing up in the Bay Area, particularly in such green-car-friendly climes as Berkeley.
There, in a supreme case of automotive irony, a year-old outfit called Green Motors is selling all-electric Zenn cars out of a showroom on San Pablo Avenue that once housed a Cadillac dealership.
Zenn (it stands for Zero Emission, No Noise) is a Canadian product that looks like a cartoonist's vision of a downsized automobile. It costs about $16,000 and comes only in silver, blue or, natch, green.
Green Motors has sold 36 cars since December. Nationwide, Zenn sold 250 cars in 2007 and nearly equaled that total in just the first quarter of this year, said company spokesman Isaac Cronin.
The Zenn car is a two-seat hatchback that is roughly the same height and width as a Mini-Cooper, but is 20 inches shorter. Its real beauty, in this age of soaring gas prices, is that it is cheap to run. It costs about 3 cents a mile to operate a Zenn car, whereas gasoline costs alone, according to AAA, are close to 10 cents a mile for an average car.
An electric car operates very simply: An electric motor drives the wheels. There is no transmission and no need for gasoline or oil.
The Zenn car has a range of 30 to 50 miles, the company says. A full charge takes about eight hours.
Green Motors got its start in the spring of 2007, when Marc Korchin, who had been an executive with small companies, had an epiphany.
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A visit to Green Motors' showroom starkly illustrates the evolution that Americans are going through in the world of driving cars - a shift from decades of gas-guzzlers to the new world order of alternate automotive energy.
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