No more are the days of choosing between eco-consciousness and adrenaline fueled, testosterone spiked power! That’s right, eco-nerds, like me, can now drive like the true “playa’s” of South Beach and Beverly Hills! 0 to 60 mph in 4 sec while getting 135 mpg equivalent all with the help of Tesla? Yup, thats what I said, Nikola Tesla, and if that ain’t weird enough, the car is completely electric!

My good friend Kilgore Trout over at Quintessential Ramblings introduced me to this magnificent mixture of sex, testosterone and ‘green’. This was at a good time since I just finished watching the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? But, before I get to the smog killing rampage of burning rubber, let’s take a walk down, a very unfamiliar, memory lane.

After a decade of thinking that the electric car has never been and is still fundamentally a conceptual idea, I learned, thanks to the documentary, that not only are electric cars a part of our past, but they are perfectly sound and were once implemented quite successfully.

Why does this sound new to most people? Well, for the long version you will just need to watch the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? The short is, well, lots of people killed it. The main culprits are General Motors, the California Air Resources Board and who else — the Bush administration.

GM was the creator of the EV1 the first production electric car that was implemented into California’s streets and highways. You may ask, “Then why is GM responsible for killing it?” Well, according to the documentary, they created it to prove that there is no demand for electric cars and that the public wanted bigger, heavier more gas guzzling SUVs. GM did this by creating the electric car, using the less powerful choice of batteries, under-funding and advertising it and then doing a survey that cut 5,000 interested people to 50. This way they could say, “See there is not enough demand to warrant the production of this type of car.” And, since I rarely side with the large conglomerates and their billion dollar addictions, I will believe that most of the film is true.

They, supposedly, completely manufactured the idea that no one wanted to spend money on this technology. Even though GM was offered 1.9 million dollars to sell back 79 of the EV1s that were heading off to be crushed and disposed of. They didn’t even let the people that already leased, drove, and fell in love with this car, buy it for good. They repossessed every single electric car on the road and quietly disposed of them, so there would be no record of its success. Does that make any sense to you? And, we can all figure out why the government was behind it as well, right?

Well fortunately, the electric car did not die completely, it was just being built behind the scenes by independent motor corporations like the Tesla Motors, Inc. Hopefully, more people will realize that not only are electric cars still the answer to our national crisis of oil, but are a REAL and viable vehicle for today’s public. Now, enough of me, let’s let Tesla Motors give us an example of why electric cars should not be just a secret, historical conspiracy, but our sexy, adrenaline filled future to come.

“Some people find it hard to imagine our car’s Lamborghini-beating acceleration comes from a motor about the size of a watermelon. And while most car engines have to be moved with winches or forklifts, ours weighs about 70 pounds — a strong person could carry it around in a backpack (although we don’t recommend it). Compare that to the mass of machinery under the hood of $300,000 super cars that still can’t accelerate as quickly as the Tesla Roadster.

But more important than the motor’s size or weight is its efficiency. Without proper efficiency, a motor will convert electrical energy into heat instead of rotational energy. So we designed our motor to have efficiencies of 85 to 95 percent; this way the precious stored energy of the battery pack ends up propelling you down the road instead of just heating up the trunk. - Tesla Motors.com

Still think being eco-conscious is embarrassing or silly? I hope not, since you will see me in one of the Tesla Roadsters in a couple of years, and I will be laughing all the way to an oil independent future. Hopefully, I will see you there!