Green goes green

Imagine never having to endure the stink of gasoline or the pain of paying at the pump. Imagine cities that smell as clean as the countryside and towns that pump electricity back to the cities from solar plants and wind farms. Imagine energy so cheap and machines so efficient that an energy crisis will seem as antiquated as a flat Earth. Now stop imagining. The technology to do this is already here. The only thing America is missing is the nerve to take it.

With a sleek aluminum and carbon fiber body, a 250-mile range and the ability to accelerate from 0 to 60 as fast as your average Ferrari or Porsche, the Tesla Roadster shatters the stereotype that paints electric cars as little more than golf carts. Powered by 900 pounds of batteries, it has a two-gear transmission, zero emissions and a gas pedal without the gas.


Not surprisingly, Tesla Motors wasn’t founded in Detroit. The Silicon Valley entrepreneurs-gone-automakers behind the company could never have got started in the land where dinosaurs still stalk the roads – and the boardrooms. Unfortunately, many Americans share the same view as Michigan’s shockingly imbecilic auto executives; it’s either environment or economy, golf carts or gas guzzlers, and never the twain shall meet.

Al Gore summed up the dinosaur view in “An Inconvenient Truth.” On one side of a balance, there are some gold bars. On the other side, there’s the entire planet. This picture is as inaccurate as it is ridiculous. As the Tesla Roadster shows, economic and environmental progress aren’t mutually exclusive but complementary.

Michigan Daily