election agreement with electric cars.

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Perhaps the United States Advanced Battery Consortium has run out of funding? Maybe the candidates’ energy experts need to remind them that back in 1991 the US DOE funded hundreds of millions of dollars of research in partnership with the Big 3 automakers to develop batter batteries for electric cars. You think they would have come up with something by now, because last year ZAP with the help of Danish scientists successfully tested a lithium battery system that can propel the Xebra over 152 miles on a single charge.

For ZAP, an electric car is certainly a factor for our local city council race, or an electric truck to be specific. Santa Rosa City Council candidate Judy Kennedy parked her Lexus in her garage virtually for good since buying her ZAP Xebra Xero solar-electric pickup. With balloons and banners on her truck, she’s hard to miss campaigning around downtown Santa Rosa.

Recently, concerns had risen in Kentucky about the legality of the Xebra, a city-speed electric car and truck made by ZAP of Northern California. The Xebra meets Federal law as a motorcycle, but in Kentucky there was a law that motorcycles with an enclosed cab were not allowed on Kentucky roads.

Several Kentuckians took up the issue, led by a couple of prospective ZAP dealers and potential Xebra customers. They lobbied their local politicians who seemed interested in helping, both Republicans and Democrats.

It went even further. When the issue of making vehicles like the Xebra legal on Kentucky roads, the issue went to a vote by the bipartisan legislative committee for Economic Development and Tourism. The tally was 54-0 in favor of expanding the use of electric vehicles, a landslide victory. The most exciting moment was when Democrat Governor Steve Beshear took up the issue and passed an executive order to make the Xebra legal in Kentucky.

Of course, we should always give proper credit where credit is due. The first politician to support ZAP’s electric vehicles was not a Republican nor a Democrat. In 2007, Green Party Mayor Gayle McLaughlin of Richmond, California authorized that addition of three ZAP Xebra trucks to her public works fleet, the first fleet in the world to use the Xebra.

So, this raises the question, with all the political support for electric cars, who or what is against them or keeping them out of the mainstream?