The prospect of 5 dollar a gallon gas has finally got the attention of the Big 3 automakers in Detroit. Chevy is now working on a plug-in electric car dubbed “The Volt“. Not very manly, but to the point. According to the website, if you drive less than 40 miles a day (and that’s most people), you’ll use zero gallons of gas and produce no emissions.
Sure this technology already exists. And sure, Detroit is way late (again) to this game. However, the Big 3 have such a huge impact on car buying trends in the bulk of the country (not so much on the west coast), that it it critical that they get aboard the green bandwagon.
Of course these are the same guys that produced and then killed the EV1. They address this on the site by saying “its timing wasn’t quite right”, which is a bunch of crap. They had to pry those vehicles away from their impassioned owners who followed them to the Arizona desert where they were summarily crushed, lest anything get in the way of our gas powered economy. You can see the whole sordid story in the riveting documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?
I sure hope they get it right this time. I’m tired of getting 20 miles to the gallon. I just can’t find a decent alternative to AWD Subaru. I just don’t drive my car much these days and will be doing a lot of carpooling come ski season.
I like the way the Volt looks, not that I’d ever buy an American car. I still don’t understand why all the hybrid and electric cars have to look so different. Why can’t they put new technology in a standard looking car?
Another great trip to Whistler. Here are the highlights:
Russell grabbed me at the downtown Renaissance Vancouver. I had to leave in the middle of Jared Spool’s keynote at Web Directions North, which was a bummer, but they will eventually post the podcast. The ride up to Whistler, 2 hours north of the city, was easy. We had a little drama with getting to the condo, but it worked itself out without too much trouble. Russell and I were forced to have a few beers at Citta in Whistler village while we waited for my brother to arrive and pick up the key.
The condo this year was The Aspens. Also in Blackcomb, but up the mountain, ski-in, ski-out, which was fun, except when we wanted to go out at night which required a hike through the snow about 200 meters. It was a little on the small side. We originally planned for 5 people and with 5 it would have been fine, but we had 2 crashers on the floor and it was a bit hechtic, but fun. It was a good group. The condo had three outdoor hot tubs and a large pool. Perfect place to end the ski day with beer or glass of wine in hand.
It was me, Russell, my brother Brian, his friend Kim and a friend of hers from Seattle, Stacie, my coworker Mariah and our oldest friend Jon who grew up across the street from us and was born just 20 days after us. We were all skiers except Jon who is a boarder. Kim and Stacie went snowshoeing on Friday, but we shamed them into skiing on Satruday and they took off Sunday.
The first day kinda sucked. We were on Blackcomb. It wasn’t cold, but the visibility was very poor, with whiteout conditions in places near the top. The fact that it hadn’t snowed in weeks and it had rained on the mountain a few days earlier made for seriously icy conditions. It wasn’t fun sliding all over the place. It was a serious bummer because we’d been hearing about the record snowfall Whistler had in December and January while we were suffering though the drought in the Bay Area, but we didn’t get to experience any of it. We had lunch at the Roundhouse. We did make it to the Crystal Hut later in the weekend, but just to warm up and we missed out on their epic steak sandwiches. There’s always next year.
Then it started snowing. Not a ton, but enough to change the conditions from downright miserable to absolutely fantastic.
We went for dinner on Friday at the