WILD BILL CRUISES IN HIS FIRST ELECTRIC VEHICLE

The ZENN of Driving

By Bill Schneider, 11-17-07

	Matt Elsaesser and the ZENN. BELOW: Filling it up and the power under the hood. Photos by Bill Schneider.

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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