The Wheel Deal: Road trip version

Electric car gets its kicks on Route 66

Posted by Sarah K. Burkhalter at 4:12 PM on 05 May 2006

Read more about: electric vehicles | cars

Electric car booster Remy Chevalier -- editor at large for the zine Electrifying Times and last seen at swanky parties with Grist higher-ups -- is getting his kicks on Route 66. No, literally. If you're in Chicago next Friday, head to the Funky Buddha lounge to help Remy and Co. kick off a two-week trip from Chicago to Los Angeles on the infamous Route 66.

No gas-guzzling road trip this -- the crew has stated three eco-goals:

Encourage Toyota to produce a Hybrid version of their Scion xB.
Promote Electrifying Times magazine and shoot a lot of great photography.
Find perfect spots to install EV chargers all along Route 66 (see map here) so future tourists can travel the entire length of the old route with an EV or plug-in hybrid.

And the whole thing will be caught on video, so you can presumably experience it virtually sometime in the future.

Need more information? Me too. The web site is, shall we say, no Grist Magazine not über-informative. But it does have a prominent picture of a girl in a bathing suit. Why? Not sure. Perhaps she's doing the electric boogaloo. Get it? Electric? Or perhaps she's just standing by a Scion in her underwear. Whatever.

For story: The Wheel Deal: Road trip version
7 Comments | Post a Comment

That must be one of those eco-chicks I keep

hearing about. I would be very happy with a plug-in hybrid. An all electric car is going to be much harder to do and a plug-in hybrid would be a good stepping stone.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 4:39 PM on 06 May 2006

Don't forget Rapa Nui!

Will men actually be moved to buy this rather nerdy, fussy-looking vehicle, if there is a tall slender blonde woman standing in front of it, wearing a revealing little one-piece thing and adopting a come-hither attitude? Do they really believe she is saying something like, "If you buy this fussy-looking vehicle, I will know you are a true man, the man of my dreams, and I will want to have torrid sex with you in the fold-down back seat"?

Is there a flip-side, for the sake of ladies with bulging pocketbooks? One of those extreme dodgeball-ists who model for Hanes Underwear? But what would he be posing in front of? What could we expect the ladies to want to buy? Surely not a remarkably ugly white metallic thing.

And let us not overlook the bizarre intrusion of the Easter Island monumental statuary in the background. Maybe there is a reference to an ancient legend that all children in, say, California study in school: The blonde is being imprisoned (ha ha) by the evil stone giant; and she is beckoning to her rich hero to come get in the big white toaster-oven and mow the monster down; and then will come the moment when she cries, "My hero!, how can I ever repay you?!"

Most ironically, the story of Easter Island is a notorious environmental tragedy. And the obsessive quarrying, carving and transport of those statues had a lot to do with it. It is hard to see how those statues can ever be used in a green cause.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 11:58 PM on 07 May 2006

A new hybrid bio-d

You are too cycnical my friends, ovbiously this atractive young woman is promoting energy saving fashion as well as plugin vehicles. Less cloth, less energy used!

And if we slightly more mature, a bit less atractive males adopt this style (like those european bathing suits in the our case) it could reduce over population by discouraging sexual activity, a win, win for the environment.

Check out this hybrid d.

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/05/afs_trinity_dis.html#comment-16992210

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

by amazingdrx at 4:15 AM on 08 May 2006

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

Well, you see, this is where we ethicists with an interest in aesthetics crack into action: How are we to decide?; Is it better for everybody to wear minimal bathing-suits, no matter what their exposed flesh looks like?; Or, for the sake of the common aesthetic good, should we cover up, a` la musulmane, la iranienne, la Talibanette, inspite of all the implicated green-house gas emissions?

Never you fear, we are working on it. Lots of interviews are scheduled, with bathing-suit models and underwear models of all sorts.

Nice call, "Mahmoud Hitler." And, even more, identifying Islamo-fascism as worse than Nazism.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 4:42 PM on 08 May 2006

Nakedness, good call

There's another excellent argument for less clothing my dear philosopher. It irritates the puritanical "mahmouds" and "falwels" of all political and religious stripes. Hehehey.

I am already interviewing skimpily clad undividuals on these and other vital issues while training on the wooded trails I bike on. Will inform the discussion as the dialectic moves forward.

Swimming season is almost upon the northwoods. (Justice Black and his wife were known to "skinny dip" in our area though, a distinguished opinion undeed!)

Why hasn't Victoria weighed in on this topic yet? That's what I want to know.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

by amazingdrx at 6:47 AM on 09 May 2006
[ Parent ]

Thanks for all your comments.

Dear caniscandida,
Read Culture of Ecology: Reconciling Economics And Environment (Hardcover) by Robert E. Babe. If you mouse over the main banner picture on The Box 66 website, the photo underneath has a cover of the book, revealing how the Moai is quickly becoming a symbol for the whole of the environmental movement, for the very reason you described. Thanks for your comments, they're all great! And yes, it's always about slaying the dragon for the girl!

RemyC.

by RemyC at 12:21 PM on 09 May 2006

Yes!

Slay that infernal combustion dragon! Right arm dude!!

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

by amazingdrx at 4:49 AM on 10 May 2006

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