WILD BILL CRUISES IN HIS FIRST ELECTRIC VEHICLE
The ZENN of Driving
By Bill Schneider, 11-17-07
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| Matt Elsaesser and the ZENN. BELOW: Filling it up and the power under the hood. Photos by Bill Schneider. | |
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After you’ve driven a million miles like I have, or so it seems, driving really isn’t that enjoyable. It’s more like a necessary evil, something you need to do to go fishing. And today, with oil supplies dwindling and global climate change being blamed largely on the internal combustion engine, I almost feel guilty when I start up my trusty Toyota.
But last Friday, I suffered no guilt as I cruised around Helena in a new electric vehicle called the ZENN, which stands for Zero Emissions, No Noise, and is called “Earth’s Favorite Car,” by its makers. I enjoyed every minute of it, and now, you can, too.
I admit some trepidation as I buckled in behind the wheel--and when I turned the key, but nothing noticeable happened. But after a few minutes, I was having a blast, especially watching all the looks we were getting. What were they thinking?
We stopped on the drive-up to the Downtown Walking Mall to take these photos, and immediately had a dozen people surrounding us and asking questions faster than we could answer them--and also a few University of Montana fans complaining about the “bobcat colors.”
It was the day before the big game, after all, so later, I asked Ron Gompertz, of Bozeman, who owns the car about the colors, and he swore it was strictly a coincidence, claiming the car came direct from the factory. “I had nothing to do with the color scheme,” he insisted.
I was driving around Matt Elsaesser, who had the electric car on loan for a few days from EcoAuto, Inc. of Bozeman. Elsaesser is the founder of a local nonprofit called SAVE (Student Advocates for Valuing the Environment) that started out as a small group of students doing a recycling program at Carroll College. From those humble beginnings four years ago, SAVE has gone citywide and now manages recycling of a wide variety of items from cell phones to print cartridges to plastic bottles, about 500,000 pounds of which would otherwise be in the landfill.
Under Elsaesser’s leadership, SAVE has shown how citizen initiative and volunteerism can do things the Helena city government couldn’t do, giving Helena has one of the most sweeping recycling programs in the region.
That initiative, incidentally, also helped Elsaesser become the top vote-getter in the recent city election and become, at the age of 26, what most people think is the youngest city commissioner ever in Montana.
With the recycling program purring along, SAVE expanded its ambition and lobbied two bills through the last legislature--one making gray water recycling technology legal and another creating a new category for “medium speed electric vehicles,” which brings me back to the ZENN.
Electric vehicles face a lot of challenges, and top among them a federal law that limits the speed to 25 mph. However, two states, Montana and Washington, have passed laws allowing modified electrics or NEVs (Neighborhood Electric Vehicles) to go 35 mph. California is just now trying to pass a similar law.
Because of federal law, car dealers can’t legally sell electrics without a governor holding the top speed to 25 mph, but as explained by Gompertz, owner of EcoAuto, Inc., the buyer can easily and inexpensively modify the cars to go 35 mph once they own it. He mentioned one firm in Bozeman, Leer Engineering, that does it on a regular basis for cars he sells.
“People have a long tradition of souping up vehicles,” Gompertz points out, going all the way back to our muscle cars like Mustangs and GTOs, and now, of course, we need “souped up” electrics. This modification is a key because that extra 10 mph makes NEVs much more practical for commuting, running errands and 90 percent of the other driving people normally do around town.
Even for people like Elsaesser who usually rides his mountain bike, the ZENN gives him a great alternative on days when weather makes bike commuting difficult.
He admits that people will need another vehicle when they leave town, but you can keep that vehicle in the garage while you use the NEV to commute and run errands around town. City driving often accounts for most miles people drive.
“This is really the realm of the electric car right now,” Elsaesser explains. “Out on the highway, you’re looking at hybrids.”
Gompertz is one of the self-proclaimed “ecotrepreneurs” struggling to get their products sold and distributed against the will of the big auto and oil companies who have the lobbying power to get federal regulation on their side, which is precisely why, he exists, we have the 25 mph restriction, even though electric cars could go 50-70 mph. “The big auto companies know that restriction will greatly limit the use of electric vehicles.”
He’s also quick to delve into how auto and oil companies have bought up patents for new technology like better batteries needed to increase the use of electric cars and then kept this technology off the market. “Big auto companies don’t want competition from little upstart independent electric car companies.”
Gompertz says the ZENN has an electric engine that lasts 500,000 miles, but because longer lasting Lithium batteries have been kept off the market and he must use “old technology” lead batteries, the ZENN only gets 40 miles on a full charge, which takes 6-8 hours. 
That still seems practical to me, though. In Montana, you can now legally drive the ZENN 35 mph, the speed limit on many city streets, but it’s also legal to drive it 35 mph on a 45 mph street. People just need to remember to plug in their NEV when they get home, no different than what they routinely do with their cell phone, to make sure it’s always charged up.
Gompertz has solar panels on his roof and uses this electricity to charge up his electric cars, so he’s using nearly zero fossil fuels. Even if somebody doesn’t have solar- or wind-generated electricity and has to use coal-powered electricity, he explains, the ZENN only uses 10 percent of the fossil fuels as the average vehicle uses in Montana.
Right now, Gompertz notes, the biggest markets for electric cars are Seattle and Portland, but he thinks Montana cities are great potential markets because Montanans often spend 10 percent of their income for commuting.
The ZENN starts at about $10,000, with the modification often running about $2,500.
While working with Elsaesser’s group to change Montana law to allow “souped up” electrics, Gompertz found strong bipartisan support for the concept. “These vehicles run on homegrown electricity that we make right here in Montana but normally send to California.”
The lawmakers saw this connection clearly, he said. They could see that the bill gave Montanans a choice of using our own electricity in one of these electric cars or using oil imported oil from Middle East to run our pickup trucks. “Who is more patriotic?” he asks.
Footnote: If you go down to Bozeman and test drive a ZENN, the manufacturer will plan 25 trees for you. If you buy one, they’ll plant 250.
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Comments
R
If there was a way to make the home brew fire through a closed combustion turbine device they could call the car "ZENNi and the Jets." Might even get Elton John to compose a song for it and sing it for the promo.
Another idea would be to add a small sail on top to take advantage of Montana breezes. But that might make it a little 'tacky' in hard winds.
However there was a group that opposed the original methane idea. They called themselves "Before U Try That Say No IF Foreign" (BUTTSNIFF). They might tend to be a bit ZENNophobic to this Canadian golf cart as well if it were augmented with methane. Possibly due to supply issues as beans are being diverted to make biofuels.
My issue with electric cars is lead batteries. I wonder how the process to mine and smelter lead, and the energy used in that process, added to the collateral environmental damage, changes the net benefit/destruction ratio to the whole of it? Outside of having your own wind turbine or $50,000 invested in solar panels, how do you power the thing without using fossil fuels or those nasty and destructive hydro power facilities, or Cod Forbid!!!l, nuclear power plants? For a 25 mile an hour limit, isn't a golf cart just as beneficial? And wouldn't you really need two of them? One on the charger, and one to use.
Regarding whether people should consider a ZENN, they probably should seek out the enlightened ZENN master, Yoga Berra, for his wisdom. He might just tell them that it would take 98% of a person with half a brain to buy one, the second half to operate it, and the remaining half to like it.
How'd you like to get in a wreck surrounded by all those lead batteries with acid? And the power is not completely free, has to come from petro/carbon/radiological minerals. Even "solar" requires heavy metals for the panels to hook into.
So you can't say the Zenn is emissions-free. A salmon is getting pureed in the hydro turbine, Homer Simpson is glowing at a nuke plant, precious raptors get conked for wind, and for all the others, there's carbon released to the air, just not in your back orifice.
The Zenn seems to serve a role, tho, for all those people who drive without hauling anything useful anywhere. Leave the rest of us to our vans and pickemups.
http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=8130
As for the lead in the batteries, you likely already own a lead-acid battery. Its what starts your car in the morning. Lithium-ion would be preferable, but as the author pointed out the "big auto and oil" companies hold the patents and aren't in a sharing mood these days.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is a duck. An electric car produces far fewer emissions in its operation. How much energy and emissions were produced to make the car, and the electricity it runs on? That is the question all the promoters are dodging. What is the NET reduction in greenhouse gases? Numbers. Tons of carbon, whatever.
Somehow in all things practical, the most energy efficient and best to drive in the most comfort will earn the dollars in the marketplace. I just talked today to a guy who bought a Prius, and in passing, noted that it was worth a tax credit of several thousand dollars. So how much energy was used to earn the money that will take the place of his tax credit? The farm I work on is getting LPG powered (450 cubic inch GMC engines) fans to raise tempertures at critical times in the spring. We get an energy credit because we are not smudging and using oil. So the engines use 13 gallons of LPG an hour when they run and we have three of them. 40 gallons an hour. Or $100 an hour. Count it any way you want. But we put them in because they could help us greatly, and because we could not afford not to with the tax credits and cheap interest. Tax policy, other people's money, drove the process. And we are still burning fossil fuel, in just another form. No particulate matter to speak of as opposed to smudge pots, which are too expensive and inefficient to use, anyway.
I just read some piece on tar sands in Canada, and the process and energy used to produce a form of crude oil from them. It all works with $3 gas, and does not at $2 gas. And the environmental damage is huge. Monster holes in the earth. A folly, really. Better the US is drilling in Alaska than ruining rural Canada to run the family flivver.
And don't biodiesel or ethanol me. Won't hear it. Can't get the job done without our having to import most of our food. Again, folly in the name of out of control environmental zeal. Public policy made using science that is funded by public policy makers to a directed and sought after conclusion. The whole of the university system is being hijacked by pimps in Congress, the science faculties whoring themselves to garner the huge flow of pork flowing from a Congress seeking to separate themselves from the Red State hicks, and doing it with their bought and paid for scientific whores. If it walks like a duck........it is a duck.. So where did you buy your science duck?
The energy that powers the electric cars in Montana is about 50/50 hydroelectric and coal power. This energy will only become cleaner as Montana’s renewable energy portfolio goes into effect (increasing amounts of non-hydro renewable energy until 2015). If you’re able to generate your own renewable energy (through solar or wind), the ZENN becomes an ever better choice.
The lead-acid batteries on the ZENN are made of the same materials as a lead-acid battery in a car. Car batteries are sealed units and already have an established recollection program. 98% of all lead-acid batteries in the U.S. are recycled. (<a >Cadex Electronics Inc.</a>)
The ZENN’s electric engine also makes it less toxic. No engine oil or radiator fluid is used. The carbon lifecycle impact of the ZENN is much lower. Most gasoline burned by conventional cars must be shipped across oceans)
The ZENN’s speed and range are ideal for city driving, which is the vast majority of daily trips. The 35-mile an hour limit is perfect for city driving, since this car is not suitable for long road trips anyway. The ZENN serves as the ideal daily commuter car for individuals to make a positive choice for the environment.
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The S.A.V.E. Foundation works to promote environmental advocacy in Montana, including policy work to allow the ZENN to go faster and be more practical to the average Montanan.
More information is available at <a >Savemobile.org</a>
Human-activity generated greenhouse gases are proven to be the primary cause for global warming. Similarly, it is well documented that energy efficient electric cars, such as the ZENN, have much less of an environmental impact relative to combustion engine vehicles. To deny this at this point is as absurd as denying a link between cigarettes and cancer.
Electric cars can be modest and affordable - the ZENN starts at around $10,000. Or they can be exotic, and expensive - the Tesla roadster starts at $98,000. However, at this time, there are NO highway speed electric cars manufactured by any major US auto makers. Electric cars are currently the exclusive domain of independent startups. Parallels to the beginnings of the micro-computer and Internet industries are plain the see.
For many of us, as important as the environmental benefits of electric cars are the economic benefits. Here in Montana gas is now $3.15 per gallon. That's 20 cents a mile for an average SUV or pickup. Many Montanans spend over 10% of their income on gas each month.
Meanwhile, electricity costs less than 10 cents per kilowatt hour. Driving an electric car costs less than 2 cents a mile to operate. If you have installed solar panels on your roof, you can drive for free.
Electric cars use locally produced electricity rather than imported oil. Who's the bigger patriot... the guy driving the F350 Dually with an American flag decal on the window, sucking down Middle Eastern oil, or the guy driving the electric car with the "Question Authority" bumper sticker, fueled only by Montana made electricity?
In a few short years, electric cars will likely be as common as SUVs are today. Can we even remember life before the invention of the phrase "Sport Utility Vehicle?" How did we even get around before the Ford Explorer was launched in 1991?
Is it a conspiracy theory to suspect that big oil companies don't really want to see electric cars become mainstream?
Is it a conspiracy theory to believe the major car companies don't want to produce cars that make them less profit? Ask your local car dealer ... between 40-50% of his revenue comes from the service department. With no need for tune-ups, spark plugs, oil changes, mufflers, radiators, electric cars don't need basic service beyond windshield washer fluid. Electric motors... like those found in elevators, streetcars, chair lifts, or even a kitchen blender, last much longer than combustion engines, and are far more efficient at converting energy into velocity.
Is it a conspiracy theory to think that local, state and federal governments might worry what would replace the lost gas tax revenue if suddenly everyone started driving cars powered by electricity?
There are electric cars such as the ZENN which are low in speed ONLY because US laws don't allow them to go faster. There are also electric cars, such as the Tesla, that accelerate from 0-60 in under 4 seconds... faster than a Corvette or Porsche. And for us gear-heads, it should be noted that electric cars have virtually no torque curve. They are as powerful at 100 RPM as at 5000 RPM.
So why aren't there more electric cars on the road today? Well, primarily because energy dense storage devices required to power Electric cars for long distances aren't yet affordable.
But that's changing too as demand increases.
Lead Acid batteries are better than ever. Lithium batteries are becoming more affordable and safer to operate. Ultra-capacitor electric energy storage units (EESU) are in the final stages of testing, and are expected to hit the market soon. Hydrogen fuel cells remains an illusive and expensive technology, and they are losing favor, even among their die hard supporters. Nickel metal batteries are still prevented from coming to market by the big oil company that owns the patent, but that too will change soon.
By driving an electric car NOW, you can make a positive difference, and have fun at the same time. If you've never driven an electric car, you're in for a big surprise. They're quick, nimble and a pleasure to drive. As with computers, next year will always bring something faster and better. But if you ask me, life is too short to sit on the sidelines waiting for everything is be perfect. I want my electric car now!
I just purchased a ZENN vehicle on(12/16/07) and my family and I are very happy with it. The ZENN vehicle it grows on you and you end up loving it more and more.
Please keep me post it on any changes good or bad.