Why are American automakers always on the defensive? What are they trying to protect? If it's their share of the market then common sense would dictate they take the offensive by taking a chance on an aggressive team like ours, just like Toyota did. Instead they keep losing ground to foreign innovation, even though they may have had the jump start on the situation. Maybe they feel the S-10 isn't ready? But I don't think that's it. The same advertising agencies handling the EV accounts are handling all the other campaigns for all the other regular models. These agents probably resent being put in that position and instinctively work against it. So because the "old guard" is still in charge of promoting the "new kid on the block", by nature, if not by malice, they want it to fail. Once EV divisions at major automakers realize this, they'll free themselves from sabotage within their own ranks. Purveyors of cool can't be found among reactionaries and they need to hire hip new firms. Meanwhile I wonder what other sales departments are doing at other theme parks around the country! I wouldn't be surprised if Ford rushed in to strike a deal with Universal! That seems to be the American way; Coke vs. Pepsi, Democrats vs. Republicans, etc... leaving little room for the million of Snapple drinkers among us.
 
Still a little wet and soggy, but well fed, our media procession ran through the rain one more time to the Terminator attraction. It's really Titanic James Cameron's Terminator 3 movie except the only theater in the world where you can see it is there. It was the one thing I didn't want to miss while in Orlando and they gave it to us as a treat! The 3D is so good you forget it's a trick and find yourself ducking like a sucker when things start flying. I won't give away the rest, I'd be spoiling the experience. I was reminded that Alvin Marks, the man who invented the polarized plastic lenses used in the 3D glasses has since developed a photovoltaic plastic called Luminoid which would be dirt cheap to mass produce and much more efficient at transforming sunlight into electricity than the best silicon wafer! But guess what? It's been in the laboratory stages for the last ten years! Like we haven't heard that before. My guess is they're waiting for Energy Conversion Devices to recoup their amorphous investment before unleashing the next generation of PV technology.
 
The next morning we all piled back into Marshall Houston's rented Mustang convertible which had less leg room than the smallest EV at the show. We kept getting lost back and forth from the two hotels because in the fog, without a visual on the Dolphin, there's nothing left in the sky to let you know where you are. Global positioning would have saved our bacon. Road signs at Disney world are a joke, designed to send you off on the wrong direction so you can discover more of the park and burn massive quantities of fuel! The ten minutes trip always took an hour, so we missed most of the media breakfast. By the time we got there all the briefings had taken place. But not all was lost. There were plenty of croissants, muffins and melon slices left. I spent most of the morning riding one EV after another, trying to ask intelligent questions. When I finally got around to the EV1 which I'd never driven before I was surprised at how shabby the plastic interior was compared to Japanese workmanship, as if little or no attention had been paid to the way components felt in your hands. Whatever happened to the nobility of Bakelite? Remember when plastic had substance?
 
I like to drive with the window opened. I never use air-conditioning. I rather sweat and have a breeze coming over my forehead. That's why I miss the little side windows old cars used to have. They made driving with the windows down much more fun by breaking the wind. I also don't trust electric windows because without manual handles you can't get out if you drive into a body of water! All this unnecessary electric stuff like not having a key for the ignition annoyed me. But worse of all, I couldn't stick my elbow out the window because the door was too high. There's only one position you can sit in the EV1 and it's OK I guess if you're in the cockpit of a jet plane, but not to cruise around.
 
Which brought me to my next question. I had a long conversation with one of the engineers who was in on the EV1 from the start. He told me that not once had the thought of making an EV1 convertible ever been brought up! So what's the point of having an EV1 in California if you can't pop down the hood and stick your elbow out the window to impress the babes on Melrose and Rodeo Drive? You tell me? In my opinion the design of the EV1 only reinforces the misconception that electric cars are futuristic, a 1950's kind of future which has come and gone but never happened, like the one Disney tried to freeze frame in Tomorrow land. At the Detroit auto show GM announced a motor half the size and twice as powerful for the EV1. I hope it will also inspire a more down to earth approach to EVs, one people can be comfortable with. After all if GM can invite top fashion designers to advise them on their regular cars, why can't they do the same for the electric models?
 
To me an electric car geared towards a mass market aimed at the general public has to target Generation X. It should be a two door convertible, with great speakers you can fully enjoy because the engine makes no noise! In Europe right now the latest craze with young car enthusiasts is "tuning", the customizing of micro-minis with monster sound systems. I expect EVS-15 will take advantage of this new trend and produce some great EVs for the "tuning" audience. That's what EVs need. Its own car "Kulture". It is starting to happen. We stopped by the Tokyo R&D booth. They had these great pictures on the wall of bikini clad "Manga" models twirling umbrellas next to an EV even Speed Racer would have been proud of. They promised to send copies we could print in Electrifying Times. The Japanese understand the value of gadget girls.
 
Hopefully the hybrid Humvee will end up in the next James Bond movie because all BMW could muster for EVS-14 was a sluggish racing yellow EV. A stiff Teutonic fashion model in her business skirt was hard pressed to make it interesting. I think she resented being the only live poster girl at the show. Then she tried to sell me on propane. It made me lose respect for what is otherwise a great road car. This show was the one time EV makers could have captured the media's imagination by spending some time on photo opportunities. EVs got lost in the shuffle at the Los Angeles and Detroit car shows, only mentioned briefly on CNN. Except for Bombardier nobody else at EVS-14 bothered with aesthetics. Bombardier introduced its golf cart for "gated communities" like Hilton Head or Palm Springs in great Hollywood fanfare. Sadly they were the only exhibitor to take out a full page ad in the Orlando Sentinel.
 
On general public day a few high school students were there as part of some event organized by the Southern Coalition For Advanced Transportation who also helped sponsor the hybrid Humvee demonstration. Otherwise there were no civilians. I saw very few people without badges who had simply paid five bucks to visit the exhibit hall for the day. There was a good reason for this. It seems Electrifying Times was the only one letting the general public know about the show. The Orlando Sentinel ran a story just one day prior leaving no time for people to plan ahead. There was an "alternative" media black out. I ran into a dozen people who saw my badge and thanked me for either faxing or mailing them the announcement I made up at the last minute letting people know about the EV parade.
 
A couple of weeks before the symposium I called the Orlando Weekly to find out what they were planning to do for the show. Nobody on staff had heard about it! You're talking about the largest circulation periodical in the Orlando area, the one paper everybody picks up to find out what's going on at the movies, in clubs, etc... How could EVS-14 forget to notify them in time for a listing in their events section? Jim Motavalli, editor of E magazine, who came down as a guest of Toyota, ended up writing an article about the show for them after the fact. It's just like when Eco-Expo had its first show in New York and forgot to tell the Village Voice! Eco-Expo also co-sponsored the National Marketplace for the Environment in DC and forgot to tell City Paper who happened to run a cover story on the EPA that week!!! Why is it PR agencies hired by these shows, in theory aimed at green consumers, refuse to do business with publications whose readership targets the market most likely to be interested by the topic? I'm crying foul!
 
That afternoon when I was walking the Boardwalk to find the best restaurant we could all go to that evening, a cast member gave me a copy of the daily newsletter published every morning by Disney for employees to read. It was the Saturday issue, the day EVS-14 was open to the general public. Half a dozen major corporations were hosting events around Disney world that day including USA Today and Harcourt Brace Javanovich, a major New York City publisher. Disney encourages cast members to participate by being aware of private functions around the park on any given day. Ideas are shared and, on paper at least, credit is given where credit is due for any suggestions put in practice. It creates synergy. There's even a director of Synergy at Disney whose job it is to network everything together, finding common links between seemingly unrelated happenings, forming stronger bonds between different operations. But guess what? There wasn't a single mention of EVS-14 in that newsletter. Not one. After that I spent the rest of the symposium telling cast members about what was going on in the exhibit hall.
 
A week before the show I had found a club organizer in Orlando who specializes in promoting events at the last minute who could have gotten dozens of volunteers to hand out flyers all over Orlando. There was still plenty of time to do something by reaching out to universities and public radio stations. But he claims the EVS-14 office put him on hold indefinitely. I also tried to get EVS-14 to advertise in the Orlando Weekly. I'd secured them a quarter page ad for $300 just before deadline. A steal! They turned it down saying they didn't have the budget.
 
I'm a big fan of conspiracy theories, and this one tells me EVS- 14, founded by the same companies who are bringing EVs to market kicking and screaming, should no longer be trusted to do their own publicity! I gave the EVAA members a list of independent progressive PR firms, the kind of agencies who promote events like Lolapalooza and place ads on MTV. I'm already on the case with EVS-15 so next time in Europe the counterculture, which has now become mainstream anyway, won't be left out again. If the general public doesn't see these cars, then what's the point of rolling them out at all? Companies pay in excess of $9000 a booth for the privilege of exhibiting at this show. After I told of my observations to a Ford executive, he thanked me by saying he would use my argument to negotiate a break in his fee. EVS has been a "honey pot" event for too long. Lee Iaccoca said so in so many words on C-SPAN 2 to a classroom full of high school students. He said he was trying to redeem himself by going into the EV business. Will he be able to break free from his past allegiances? I hope so for all our sakes.
 
On my arrival at the Orlando train station I had to take a cab to the Comfort Inn because Amtrak said there would be a bus and they lied! The cab driver asked me about my trip and I told him about EVS-14. I did fax my press release to all the cab companies listed in the Orlando Film Commission Production Guide. But nobody told him about it. He turned out to be a big fan of electric cars and knew everything about them. He had a copy of the Orlando Weekly on the front seat. He took the latest Electrifying Times as a tip on his $27 fare, that's how excited he was. All I'm trying to say is that if I had a fraction of the budget ASG Renaissance had to promote this show and a year to do the job, it would have been standing room only on Saturday!
 
That evening we pulled three tables together to the dismay of the waiters and waitresses at Spoodles, a make-believe Mediterranean restaurant on the Boardwalk. The staff of Electrifying Times and EV News gathered around the table to a feast, burying the competitive hatchet to smoke the peace pipe and talk shop all night. I flipped for the braised tuna but the portions were so small they left me wanting. Thank God for the Japanese at the show, the next day during the official opening reception the Dolphin served sushi in the exhibit hall. Tuna is one of the few fishes left you can still eat raw without fear of getting some kind of stomach virus. The bigger the fish, the least susceptible it is to that kind of infection. I won't even get into the mercury levels. I'm told they are not as high as they once were, I guess because civilized human beings have stopped dumping heavy metals into the ocean.
 
Although EV News doesn't publicly flaunt its belief in repressed technologies like we do, they are as convinced of their reality as we are. Perhaps the day will soon come when we can really confront the industry with their unwillingness to give some of these ostracized free energy inventors a chance to show their stuff. I'm one who firmly believes that there's only baby steps between fuel cell technology and cold fusion. Hopefully our concern for the environment will soon override the greed of preserving the oil infrastructure. Utilities don't care where electricity comes from as long as they can keep selling it to us. That's the plot of the 10th Insight by the author of the Celestine Prophecy. If the Utilities can figure out a way to sell us nothing for something, they'll do it. That's what "conservation" has been for them all these years. They can't let the public produce its own energy. They have to own those solar panels on your roof which is why you don't see ads for home energy systems in mainstream magazines like George or Vogue. Recently the Internet has made long distance rates a thing of the past for those who know how. Hopefully, small energy producers, who call themselves co-generators, will take advantage of this crack in the armor. But the energy cartels have been around a lot longer than the information superhighway. Dethroning their reign has been fleeting.
 
Our first day at the Dolphin I'd scoped a place to have breakfast called Coral Cafe. The night before the menu quoted $2.95 for eggs, coffee and pancakes. Good deal! We all met there at 6AM and sat down only to realize the menus had been switched for the conference and now it was an all-you-can-eat buffet for $13!!! So we took real advantage of the situation. They even had salmon!!! But the best part was the Mickey face waffles I could mush and slice my heart's content! It's so much fun torturing the mouse. In my book I read cast members can't embarrass a guest, no matter how obnoxious one might get. They have to let things slide and if one gets really out of hand, their only recourse is to call security. So scenes can go on for a long time before being rudely interrupted. It's a shame people aren't aware of that little known fact, because Disney world would become a lot more spontaneous and surprising. Instead people pretty much behave as if in a library. Cast members have developed this secret code to insult guests which only other cast members can decipher. So you get these weird sentence structures coming out of their mouth and these strange glances shooting back and forth. It's quite entertaining once you're tuned in to the charade. Bottom line is you can pretty much get away with anything you want at Disney, but I'm too old now to entice all out mayhem.
 
I did almost take a swing at someone while I was there. I'm in essence a peaceful man. I've learned to roll with the punches and always walk away from violent situations. I like my nose where it is. But something else happened in the media room which nearly got me going! This national automobile trade publication was responsible for publishing the daily newsletters which were handed out each morning at the Symposium. They had sent an editor to do the job. I formally introduced myself to him as assistant editor of Electrifying Times when the guy started chuckling and turned away from me. So I called him back to attention. That's when I could read in his eyes he didn't care a thing for EVs and thought me a complete asshole. To him this assignment was worse than Siberia. He treated everyone around him like they were subservient. I stayed cordial as my blood curled. The only guise of apology I got for such rude behavior was from one of his copy editors who said: "Hey, I got to work with the guy!" Why give the job of editing the EVS-14 daily to someone who so overtly despises EV enthusiasm unless it's to make sure nothing of importance ever graces those pages? I should have made more of it than I did on the spot, but I wanted to wait until I absorbed the situation to put it into proper perspective. After that incident the media room became a virtual ghost town, the most under utilized resource of the show. It was always empty except for this frustrated tyrant and his terrified staff.
 
Bruce had himself an Electrifying Times cap made in Oregon. I was jealous and I wanted one too. We had arrived as the official national electric car magazine, staffed with independently minded reporters who believe in and support the industry. We had grown from being a little zine a few years ago to becoming a real magazine with major advertisers, a killer web site, and half a dozen great writers sneaking their nose in everything. It was worth celebrating! I found an outdoor vendor on the boardwalk who made these personalized hats on the spot. So I blew another $27 of my shoe string budget on a camouflage cap with Electrifying Times embroidered in bright golden yellow thread to match our logo. I thought it would impress the Humvee team.
 
The rain finally let up on the last day. I went back outside to drive the pick-ups. The Ford Ranger is the better pick-up but the S-10 is the better EV. What took me by surprise was the reverse gear on the Ranger. The slightest pressure on the accelerator and the truck went flying backwards! It needs work.
 
I learned the difference between inductive and conductive chargers. Inductive means it won't zap you when wet! Besides there's something quite kinky about GM's paddle. I can't help but giggle at the fetish and bondage innuendoes. It's a winner in my book. It preserves the erotic appeal of a gas pump nozzle and plays very well visually. My money's on it as the industry standard. Without one we will take forever to set up charging stations all along Route 66. Hollywood seems to have taken a liking for it as well. Andrew Niccol who wrote and directed "Gattaca", a recent sci-fi movie from Columbia Pictures, had Ethan Hawke use the GM paddle in his film. The story takes place in an uncertain future where all cars are classic automobiles restored as EVs.
 
The revelation for me at the show was algorithmic chargers who can fill batteries full of electrons faster than pumping gas in a tank, without the smell and brain cells killing MTBE! Originally that's why electric cars were popular at the turn of the century because women hated the stench of petrol on their clothes. Now that range can exceed 100 miles with metal hydride and chargers can give you a refill in just a few minutes, there's nothing stopping EVs anymore from conquering the American landscape except corporate inertia.
 
Robert Kennedy Jr. closed the symposium with his usual generic eco-spiritual pep talk, lest we forget he was sent up the Hudson River to recover from a heroin addiction! There he met the river keeper and found his calling. He's become a familiar figure on the speaker circuit, barely tailoring his speech from one audience to the next. It's a living. My only personal recollection of him was being dissed at the International Design Center in Queens when we inaugurated a green office showroom together. I don't understand his link to the EV industry except that his grandfather is one of the major reason we're in this mess to begin with. Maybe he feels quite guilty and wants to make up for his family's ecological blindness.
 
When I gave an issue of Electrifying Times to Kenneth Baker, VP at GM, he looked at the cover and said: "Yeah, that's right, there's no reason EVs can't be fun!" Then I asked him for an ad and he passed the buck to someone at Saturn. I hope we get EV1 as an advertiser. It needs to be out there vulnerable to criticism and at the mercy of EV hobbyists. Only this way can it grow and benefit from the feedback. GM needs to show the EV community that it is serious about EVs, not just reluctantly paying lip service to environmental regulations.
 
Electric cars have been around forever. I used to play with them when I was a kid. My dad had bought me a Selectric slot car set for Christmas. He spent all night hooking the tracks as I was hiding on the staircase wondering why Santa wasn't doing that! I became so good at it I'd win all the races on vacation in the South of France at this local fair run by "vertically challenged" carnies who hated my guts because winners kept playing for free. Finally one day one of them beat me and made me feel really bad, so I lost interest. Now electric toy cars are radio controlled and Radio Shack sells them by the millions. They can do anything, go anywhere, Mars even. They can roll over and stand back up, twirl around in the air, do loop-de-loops! The spirit of the hybrid Humvee team made me think of what could happen if the EV industry started hiring some of these toy makers to build real cars! One just need look at the cyberpunk success of Robot Wars where miniature electric gladiators fight to the death like at cock fights. We'd be having a lot more fun, that's for sure.

 
The day after EVS-14 closed down Walt Disney's widow died. I thought that was a befitting omen. She had convinced Walt to change the name of his mouse from Mortimer to Mickey and changed the course of history.