We’re aboard a 30-foot, zero-emissions, hydrogen-fueled, fuel cell hybrid bus manufactured by ISE Corp. and Thor Industries, powered by UTC Fuel Cells. The bus exists due to a push by federal and state funding and California air quality regulations. According to emissions reduction requirements approved by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) in February 2000, 15 percent of new buses purchased in California must be zero-emissions vehicles by 2015. Transit agencies across the state began to explore ways to meet the target.

Perhaps the most ambitious demonstration project so far is led by AC Transit. Funded by $17 million in state and federal grants, AC Transit will operate three fuel cell hybrid buses, beginning in September 2005. The hydrogen-fueled buses are being constructed through a unique collaboration: the chassis and bodies come from the Belgian company Van Hool, the fuel cells from UTC, and the hybrid propulsion system from ISE. To fuel the buses, AC Transit is partnering with ChevronTexaco to construct a hydrogen refueling station in Oakland. It is, boasts AC Transit spokesman Jaimie Levin, “one of the most robust and elite demonstration projects in the world.”

“Who will invest in the manufacture of fuel cell vehicles if there is no widespread hydrogen supply? At the same time, who will invest in facilities to produce hydrogen if there are not enough fuel cell vehicles to create sufficient income for hydrogen producers?” This conundrum comes from Michael Ramage, chair of a National Academy of Engineering/National Research Council joint study of obstacles hindering a hydrogen fuel cell economy. In a February 2004 report, Ramage’s committee concluded that even under a best-case scenario, the switch to hydrogen will take decades.

Yet the promise of the hydrogen fuel cell is so tantalizing that research by companies and advocacy by environmentalists continues undeterred; indeed, the quest to fulfill hydrogen’s climate-change-mitigating potential has been called the “Holy Grail of the 21st century.” Mass commercialization of fuel cells, however, is confounded by a paradox: that such an exquisitely simple system—hydrogen, released from fossil fuels or freed from water through electrolysis, combined with oxygen in a fuel cell, releases electrons that drive an electric motor, which emits only water vapor—is at the same time fraught with seemingly insurmountable challenges.

Chief among these is cost. The Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that hydrogen refined from natural gas costs the equivalent of $4 per gallon, while hydrogen supplied through electrolysis or renewable energy such as wind and solar power costs three times as much. And that’s just for the hydrogen fuel. Costs for an entire hydrogen infrastructure have been pegged as high as $500 billion by the Argonne National Laboratory.

Assuming that costs can be contained, hydrogen fuel cell critics wonder where the hydrogen will come from. Obtaining hydrogen provokes a clash between “black” (generated from fossil fuels) and “green” (generated from renewable energy). Jeremy Rifkin, author of The Hydrogen Economy, calls the black vs. green hydrogen debate “the seminal environmental question of the coming century.” The problem is that extracting hydrogen from fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide. Green hydrogen proponents say that any system that does not rely on renewables is folly. As Dave Becker, director of the Sierra Club’s Global Warming and Energy Program puts it, “Getting hydrogen from dirty or unsafe sources makes no sense. It’s like trying to lose weight by jogging to McDonald’s.”

Ask people at random what they know about hydrogen and invariably you get one reply: the Hindenburg. The mental image of that exploding German Zeppelin and the perception that hydrogen is inordinately dangerous persists, so much so that critics maintain that hydrogen’s high flammability deems it unacceptably risky to use in vehicles. Complicating matters is the fact that hydrogen must be stored in tanks at extremely high pressure, up to 10,000 pounds per square inch. In a Motor Trend report examining the pros and cons of hydrogen and fuel cells, the magazine’s editors present the lingering hydrogen fear this way: “Would you balk at strapping a child seat a few inches away from a tank that holds space shuttle fuel pressurized to 10,000 pounds per square inch?”

Yet the technology’s most prominent proponent, Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, believes that go-slow proponents simply have it all wrong. In June 2003, Lovins published a peer-reviewed paper, Twenty Hydrogen Myths, contending that the “Oft-described technical obstacles to a hydrogen economy—storage, safety, and the cost of hydrogen and its distribution structure—have already been sufficiently resolved to support a rapid deployment starting now.” And while he concedes that “a poorly designed hydrogen transition”—one reliant on black hydrogen—”could cause environmental problems,” he adds that “a well- designed one can resolve most of the environmental problems of the current fossil-fuel system.”

We’re a half-hour into the second run of the morning. Every passenger who boards the bus has a question—or ten. These curious riders approach 27-year-old Jayson Cannon, the fuel cell bus’s jack-of-all-trades. Cannon’s been touring with the bus across California—Chula Vista, San Diego, Palm Springs, LA—for months. In Berkeley, the bus has found a home. Cannon tells me that the bus is welcomed with applause at bus stops and chased down by bikers who want to know when the buses arrive for good. “It’s been really overwhelming,” he says. “I expected a response, but it’s been better than I would have thought.”

I hear the same sentiment from AC Transit’s Jaimie Levin, who reads me a card from an appreciative customer: “I’ve never been so proud to ride AC Transit as when I took the zero-emission fuel cell bus. Keep up the good work.” If the public is apprehensive about the impending arrival of hydrogen fuel cells, they aren’t showing it. “It’s never, ‘Why are you doing this?’” says Levin. “It’s ‘Why aren’t you doing more of it?’”

Levin says that transit agencies like his will hasten the adoption of fuel cells. In ten to 15 years, he predicts, up to 15 percent of AC Transit’s new buses will be powered by fuel cells and, meanwhile, gasoline- and hydrogen-fueled hybrid buses will help replace the present fleet of 700 diesel buses. Many experts, including Levin, agree that the advantages inherent to fleets—buying power, convenient centralized fueling, trained staff—afford them the opportunity to mainstream fuel cells. This also explains why the DOE estimates that affordable, reliable fuel cell cars won’t appear in showrooms until 2020.

Even so, Levin is optimistic: “I hope we’re looking at a snowball rolling down a steep mountainside. Very quickly we’re moving away from the technology of the past.” •t

“We’re neck-deep in it now,” says Teresa Campbell, who co-coordinates the campaign for San Luis Obispo County. “No one thought we could do it, but we did.” In just over six weeks, volunteers gathered over 12,000 signatures—4,000 more than needed —and after submitting the petition, a 3—2 board vote secured Measure Q a spot on the November ballot.

The four counties are following the lead of Mendocino voters, who last March passed Measure H with 57 percent of the vote, making it the first county in the nation to ban GM crops. The victory represents a success in grassroots campaigning: the committee that put H on the ballot included vineyard owners and organic farmers and was spearheaded by organic brewery owner Els Cooperrider.

Over 8,000 signatures were collected next door in Humboldt County, and a July 16 fundraiser at Benbow Lake State Park featured the popular touring band The String Cheese Incident. The benefit raised over $16,000. “We have had a tremendously positive public response,” reports campaign coordinator Jim Ferguson. “This represents more than ten years of grassroots volunteer work.”

Santa Barbara, Sonoma, and Alameda counties also have active campaigns. Alameda County campaign coordinators have been working with the County Board of Supervisors and aim to have an initiative on the March 2006 ballot. The campaign has been hampered by the first organizer’s need to withdraw, but beyond that, Alameda County will be a tough row to hoe. Says Measure H campaign coordinator Doug Mosel, “They were guided by the realities of organizing and launching a campaign in a very large population center where they cannot be sure of support from what little agriculture they have. This is no easy challenge, and they concluded it makes most sense to take a longer view.”

In San Luis Obispo, volunteers are working on building endorsements. Fetzer Vineyards announced its support for Measure Q (Fetzer also supported H in Mendocino), and Campbell said other wineries are showing interest. Measure Q campaigners will distribute information packets to area grocery stores, farmers, vineyards, teachers, clubs, and schools.

A key point in the anti-GMO movement is the economic advantage of producing GMO-free crops. “Japan has said they will not purchase GMO rice or soy from anywhere in California or the US,” reports Campbell. According to GE-Free Butte County’s website, “countries who are growing crops have lost billions of dollars worth of exports because world markets are closing to GE food.” Campbell says, “People are learning about GM agriculture and realizing that no one wants to feed this stuff to their kids.”

The 9th Circuit’s actions reverse the 2003 ruling by Judge Oliver Wanger that required yet another round of environmental impact studies, requested by downstream power generators and irrigators like Westlands Water District. Westlands, the largest irrigation district in the nation and a big downstream beneficiary of Trinity flows, may yet attempt to appeal the decision. Spokesman Tupper Hall says the agency might pursue the issue of increased salinity levels in the Delta, an ironic move considering that Westlands returns a heavy load of salt, selenium, and pesticides to the San Joaquin River from desert-grown cotton, tomatoes, and lettuce.

But the tribe’s Mike Orcutt is hopeful. “Nothing remains to hold up the [Clinton policy].” In 2000, the Clinton administration demanded that flows to the Trinity be increased—but studies have held up implementation since.

The science of the Clinton policy, favored by the Hoopa, was affirmed when the bodies of rotting salmon piled up on the rocky banks of the Klamath and Trinity rivers in 2002. In studying the cause of the massive fish kills, the National Academy of Sciences found that the reduced flows on the Trinity, the major cold water tributary of the Klamath, contributed significantly.

With the 9th Circuit decision, the tribe and the Trinity County Planning Department can move beyond studying the “environmental impacts” of increased flows—an endeavor that has taken up most of the last 15 years—and get on with the task of restoring the Trinity. Says the Department’s Tom Stokely, “There’s lots of work to be done on implementing [the Clinton policy], and now we’ll have time to focus on that.”

Restoration will include removing vegetation that has grown into dried-up areas, to allow the Trinity’s cold waters to run at higher levels past the red and white alders, tan oak, and ponderosa and sugar pine along its banks. Now river rafters will be able to enjoy the rocky turn through Burnt Ranch Gorge, and the lifeblood of the salmon will flow again.

The city-owned power company—Alameda generates its own power, and has since 1887—asked Advanced Energy Systems to investigate the possibility of burning solid waste to generate additional power for the 12.8-square mile island. The waste would be burned in a gasification plant, an incinerator-like device that burns municipal solid waste (MSW) at an extreme temperature. “Residents have been misled into thinking we’re building a plant, and this is simply not true,” says Alameda Power & Telecom (AP&T) communications supervisor Matt McCabe. “We did look at gasification as a possibility but are not committed to building anything at this time.”

But Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives’ (GAIA) Monica Wilson says the community isn’t persuaded. “We see nothing in public records that states that AP&T is no longer interested in gasification,” says Wilson. “Observing this process has been confusing since AP&T has made no public statement of intent.”

Indeed, residents were so unmollified—and agitated—that 55 people showed up at the June 29 meeting of the Public Utilities Board, which oversees the power company, about half in opposition to the idea that the power company is thinking of thinking of building an incinerator.

Gasification involves heating and combusting organic waste such as food, paper, and plastic, which results in gases and byproducts such as liquid and solid residue. Though it has been touted as a safer alternative to traditional incineration, gasification still creates pollutants. “GAIA considers gasification a form of incineration, because both yield the same results,” explains Wilson. “Burning waste at a high temperature produces the formation of pollutants like dioxins, which causes serious public health threats.”

Says AP&T’s McCabe, explaining why the city approached Advanced Energy Systems about gasification as a source for additional power, “In planning for the future, it looked like we would need additional resources by 2006. We have since been able to acquire the resources to meet this need, but we will need new power by 2011.” Alameda will draw upon landfill gas from an existing site in Richmond for electricity in the meantime.

McCabe says the scope of the 2002 investigation did not include a formal evaluation of any site for this plant that may or may not still be under contemplation. Yet AP&T did consider the Davis Street Transfer Station, a garbage collection site in a lower-income area of neighboring San Leandro, as a possible location because of its existing garbage supply. San Leandro Mayor Shelia Young and community groups objected to the idea, and AP&T backed off. Says GreenAction executive director Bradley Angel, “The victory here is that GreenAction and community groups have successfully slowed the process and have mobilized community members who care about clean air.”

An irony about Alameda’s scheme is that while the city considers gasification a source of renewable energy, a gasification plant may actually reduce the city’s rate of recycling, as it encourages people to throw away recyclables and food waste rather than recycling or composting. According to Wilson, “Alameda has exceptional recycling rates, and gasification could take the focus off this and place it on burning garbage rather than encouraging a zero waste track.” Gasification does not actually produce renewable energy, since MSW can be traced back to some non- renewable sources.

McCabe says the transcript of public commentary at the September 20 meeting of the Public Utilities Board, scheduled to discuss options for power generation and to offer alternatives to gasification, will be posted on AP&T’s website. Meanwhile, AP&T would not issue a public statement regarding its policy on a gasification plant somewhere down the line. Says McCabe, “We’re taking a wait-and-see approach.”

“The CITES ban on caviar exports is a very positive sign, and it must be sustained in order to reverse the beluga sturgeon’s long-term slide towards extinction,” says Dr. Ellen Pikitch, professor and executive director of the University of Miami’s Pew Institute for Ocean Science.

This is the first time CITES has refused to approve fishing quotas for Caspian sturgeon since the UN began monitoring the trade in 1998. Caspian states must reach consensus on the division of basin-wide quotas and consider the effects of illegal fishing before CITES will lift the ban.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, Caviar Emptor, and other environmental groups fighting to preserve the sturgeon scored another victory earlier this year. In April, US Fish & Wildlife Service listed beluga sturgeon as “threatened with extinction,” giving it protection under the Endangered Species Act.

The situation for sturgeon in the Caspian Sea is dire. Overfishing, pollution, and loss of habitat are pushing this long-lived fish, which has survived virtually unchanged for millions of years, to the brink of extinction. Populations of beluga sturgeon, which produce the most prized caviar, have plummeted by an estimated 90 percent over the last 20 years.

“Sturgeon are living fossils,” says Pikitch. “While their long history illustrates the fortitude of wildlife, it has also taught us a valuable lesson about how easily an ancient species can be lost from the face of the planet.”

For caviar-craving connoisseurs, sustainably farmed American white sturgeon can provide an eco-friendly—and legal— substitute to the endangered fish’s eggs.

“We first saw the Target store when we were out taking a field trip on Codornices Creek with Union Pacific Railroad, which had applied for a permit to improve its culverts beneath I-80,” says the Regional Water Quality Control Board’s Ann Riley. “I saw this huge development going in and was shocked, particularly because I had been involved, before coming to work for the Water Board, as a member of the lower Codornices Creek planning community. We had always hoped the site could be used for flood storage.”

The Urban Creeks Council’s Carole Schemmerling, who has walked Codornices Creek for years, says that when E-Z Auto occupied the site, the land “was full of ponds and puddles” and was “almost too squishy to walk on.” If land is inundated, on average, for 14 days per year, it is considered a seasonal wetland. Whenever a development in a seasonal wetland is proposed, the developers are required to do a wetlands delineation, explains the Army Corps of Engineers’ Andrew Muss. The delineation identifies areas that are officially considered wetlands, which then need to be avoided during the development. In this case, Target hired a consultant to do a delineation but failed to have it verified by the Corps of Engineers.

“This is one of the few major developments I’ve seen where they didn’t bother getting Corps verification,” says the Regional Water Quality Control Board’s Brian Wines. By the time regulators saw the project, the site’s soils had likely been scraped and carted away. “The next thing we knew, the cement walls were up,” says Wines.

Another troubling problem is Target’s proximity to Codornices Creek—in some places, the building is less than 30 feet from the top of the creek’s banks. Despite its urban setting, Codornices Creek is habitat for the federally listed threatened steelhead trout and is the focus of one of the most ambitious urban stream restoration projects in the East Bay. The restoration—which will ultimately recontour and revegetate Codornices Creek between I-80 and San Pablo Avenue—just got underway near Fifth Street, and biologists trapped and relocated over 100 steelhead farther upstream.

When a project such as this is built so close to a creek, developers are supposed to get permits from the Department of Fish and Game, in addition to the Corps of Engineers and Regional Water Quality Control Board. But Fish and Game wasn’t contacted either. “It would make sense given the value of this stream that we should have had a hundred-foot setback,” says Riley. “But we never got a chance to ask for that.” Wines speculates that Target got a grading permit from the City of Albany, which, eager to see the site redeveloped, probably did not ask whether the company had its regulatory permits or not. The city says it assumed that Target had the proper permits because Target was using the same consultant—the Martin Group—that a previous proposed office park had used; the office park had made an effort to avoid wetlands and get its building back from the creek. Says the city’s Dave Dowswell, “I never thought they wouldn’t dot all their I’s and cross all their T’s.”

According to Target’s web site, the company wants to identify and implement “opportunities to recycle, re-use, reduce, rethink, respond and be respectful of [its] impact on communities and ecosystems.” They may get a chance to do just that. In negotiations with the regulatory agencies, Target agreed to pay $136,000 toward future restoration efforts, including setting aside money to relocate some existing structures now on the bank opposite its store, in order to create a better floodplain and buffer zone for the creek to “mitigate” the closeness of its box. It has also promised to try to relocate its loading dock— the part of the building closest to the creek—when an opportunity arises. Stay tuned.

According to some visionary experts, to truly solve the challenges posed by what the car companies call “personal mobility,” we have to look at the bigger picture: at not just what we’re driving but where, when, and why.

Dan Sperling, director of the Institute for Transportation Studies (ITS) at the University of California, Davis, believes our first order of business is to break free of a transportation monoculture—our current mindset. “All vehicles are used for all purposes,” he says. “All vehicles run on petroleum fuels. All roads are made to serve all vehicles. Almost all parking is free, except in center cities.”

Sperling thinks we can scale down the monolith with incremental steps: sharing vehicles, using electric vehicles for short trips, letting new communication technologies coordinate people and their transit, employing low-emissions vehicles, and creating parallel infrastructures so smaller vehicles aren’t competing on the same roadway with delivery trucks.

Automotive Engineering

To Sperling, the soaring popularity of hybrid cars is just the tip of an evolutionary iceberg. As industry changes to meet consumer demand for greener vehicles (helped along by rising gasoline prices), “Internal combustion engines are going to be seen as an ancient, inferior technology, maybe even fairly soon,” he says.

He foresees a new reliance on electric drive technology, most likely a combination of hydrogen fuel cells and battery electrics. “Vehicles that run on electric power are more efficient, quieter, more reliable. They provide the opportunity for accessories on the vehicle because you have what we call mobile electricity. They get rid of mechanical and hydraulic systems, replacing them with electric systems and drive-by-wire like airplanes have been for many years.”

Entrepreneurs banking on a breakout from the fossil-fuel monopoly see room for competing technologies to coexist. Rex Hodges is CEO of Sacramento-based Anuvu (pronounced “a new view”), Inc., a fuel cell company that is profitably retrofitting cars, trucks, and vans, mainly for fleet owners such as utilities companies and cities. “It’s difficult to compete with a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle if we’re in full mass production,” Hodges says.

Sperling agrees. Because of its low weight, compressibility, abundance, and — when coupled with a renewable energy source like wind or solar — zero emissions, “There’s a good likelihood that fuel cell technology will dominate as a way of providing electricity to the motors on the vehicle.” Depending on when and if the major auto manufacturers decide to get on board, Hodges says, mass production could be as little as four years—or as much as decades—away.

Hodges suggests taking an ad-hoc triage approach to new technologies. Biodiesel could first be put into larger-scale operation on school buses, for example. “The lungs of school children are particularly sensitive to diesel particulates from the combustion process. Biodiesel cuts way back on particulates, so you have kind of a very, very localized pollution issue centered around the bus itself and the population that rides the bus.”

Battery Power

One innovation is based on a simple but startling statistic: approximately three quarters of all car trips are five miles or less—that run to the supermarket for a quart of milk or to the video store to rent a movie. Using a two-ton SUV to carry a single adult a few miles to pick up a prescription is, in the words of energy expert Amory Lovins, “using a chainsaw to cut butter.”

Enter neighborhood electric vehicles, or NEVs. Battery electric vehicles have never taken off as a primary form of transportation largely because of limits on their range and speed and persistent roadside recharging challenges. But manufacturers are increasingly recognizing that electrics can be efficient get-around-town cars.

DaimlerChrysler’s GEM is a perfect example. With a top speed of 25 mph and a 30-mile range, a body resembling a sturdy golf cart but with the drive train, handling, suspension, and amenities of a car, zero-emissions vehicles like the GEM are already finding a place in some homes.”We recognize that we’re not the first car in the garage [given] that limitation of 25 mph,” says Rick Kasper, COO of Global Electric Motorcars (GEM). “However, we get greater consideration for being the second vehicle for, let’s say, the consumer in a master-planned community or a gated community, a retirement community.”

The design of such communities is exactly where ITS researcher Mark Delucchi focuses attention in his research paper, “How We Can Have Safe, Convenient, Clean, Affordable, Pleasant Transportation Without Making People Drive Less or Give Up Suburban Living.” Says Delucchi, “Solving these transportation-related problems in suburban areas where most of the growth in the US takes place, outside of central cities, has definitely proven to be by far the most difficult challenge. People who move to the suburbs do so specifically because they want a lifestyle that allows them the freedom to drive private automobiles everywhere.”

Among the major findings of Delucchi and his ITS partners was that “virtually all that is undesirable about the current land-use transportation system—impacts as far-ranging as pollution, congestion, accidents, infrastructure costs, and even loss of community—stems from the presence everywhere of fast-moving, heavy vehicles.” Simply put, smaller, slower cars (like NEVs) mean happier communities.

But how to get people out of their Land Rovers and into NEVs? According to his team’s research, Delucchi says, “Every vehicle that was a lightweight, low-speed mode had to have its own separate [road] network completely independent of the other traditional, faster, heavier vehicles in order for people to be comfortable using them.”

Delucchi proposes planned communities where every place is linked by two parallel but completely segregated street systems. Pickup trucks going to and from Home Depot would never share the road with mini-cars going to soccer practice. Even non-motorized vehicles would have their own paths in congested areas.

The surprisingly simple radial layout, complete with city center and outlying “big box” commercial areas, would give residents a safe, inviting place to drive modest, zero-emission vehicles and possibly even combat the social fragmentation associated with suburban sprawl.

So far, no towns have been built according to Delucchi’s plans. But he thinks it would be perfect for new greenfield developments throughout the Central Valley or new university towns such as the University of California, Merced. Once in place, he says, “If it is successful in the sense that people tend to use the light-weight, low-speed modes a lot, it would have an impact on transportation problems that would exceed any conventional solution we’ve ever seen proposed.”

Share the Load

While zero-emissions vehicles have garnered a lot of attention, the cutting edge of transportation may, in fact, be as simple as sharing, that Golden Rule of preschool. Sperling explains that the concept stems from the fact that “Because most of our vehicles sit around 95 percent of the time, [they're] one of the most underutilized capital assets we have in our society.” When you juxtapose idleness with the costs of financing, maintenance, insurance, and registration, car owners may start to realize they’re paying for a whole lot of nothing.

Shared vehicle services, such as the nonprofit City Car Share, where members pay dues and rent by the hour and mile, offer a cost-effective alternative. With over 3,000 members around San Francisco Bay, the number of City Car Share’s highly visible lime-green VW Beetles is evidence of the popularity of such services. Nationwide, more than 40,000 people are sharing close to 900 cars through similar organizations.

The benefits of shared cars are compounded when coupled with transit systems such as BART. “The reason [people] don’t use BART,” Sperling says, “is because they don’t live or work near a BART station. People hate to make the intermodal transfers.”

But what if a car-share program were to make that transfer a snap by, say, having prime parking spaces at the station reserved just for shared station vehicles? And what if that same system could guarantee that a shared vehicle was waiting for you at work so you could get to your afternoon dentist appointment?

Transportation researcher Susan Shaheen has designed several highly effective car-sharing experiments based around East Bay BART stations. Using wireless GPS tracking, internet-based reservations, and a “smartcard” device that provides access to vehicles, Shaheen’s CarLink I and II programs prove that car sharing could lower personal vehicle miles traveled, increase mass transit use, and remove cars from overburdened roads.

“A lot of people thought this was a cost-effective and convenient solution to driving a single-occupancy vehicle,” Shaheen reports. “By providing a flexible, demand-response alternative, this did open up more choices,” such as riding a bike to work or using mass transit.

Like Shaheen, Sperling realizes that transportation alternatives such as car-shares need good communication to work. He envisions a future where personal transportation assistants (PTAs, like PDAs) link people with mobility companies. PTAs could be a incorporated into small, handheld devices that tell you when and where shared cars or even conventional buses are available.

But just as with green fuels and zero-emission vehicles, technology alone won’t change the habits of a century of car culture. Says Sperling, “In many ways, technology is the key to allowing it to happen. But it implies some fairly substantial changes in behavior.”•t

“Yup, any diesel engine will, it’s pretty simple.”

“Can you go fast on the highway?” He looked happily skeptical.

“Oh yeah, as fast as you’d want to go.”

“Wow, good stuff.” He laughed, waved, and rolled on.

When my girlfriend Camie and I drove across the country recently in a car emblazoned with “Powered by Vegetable Oil” on the hatch, we expected the curiosity of strangers—and we got it. In Nevada a Nascar-clad fellow driving an enormous Dodge pickup took off his mirrored shades long enough to look under the hood to figure out whether or not he could rig up a similar system. In the shadow of Mount Rushmore (no lie) the curiosity of the local peace officer likely got me out of a sizeable fine (I’d lost track of the speed limit while trapped in Cougar

Mellencamp reverie—no lie). On the Lynnway in Lynn, Massachussetts, a middle-aged woman and her mother refused to obey a green light until they found out, “What’s the stahry wit’ ya cah?” In Ontario, the local mechanic warned, “If it smells like donuts, you better watch out for bears.”

So does it really run on vegetable oil? The answer is more nuanced than a hearty “yes,” and it became considerably more so along the way. When Rudolf Diesel designed his engine over a hundred years ago, it was intended to run on peanut oil. Before his engine made it to mass production, Diesel mysteriously flopped over the side of a passenger ship into the icy Atlantic. Conspiracy theorists claim it was the work of corporate oil interests. Diesel engines were subsequently presented as using a processed petroleum fuel. You can look at the nascent veggie-fuel movement as justice for Rudolf if you like.

Any diesel engine, including our little Golf, will combust vegetable oil. Unfortunately, when it’s cold, vegetable oil runs a bit too thick for most engines. There are three basic solutions: Modify the oil chemically to produce “biodiesel”; install a system that heats the oil in the fuel tank or on its way to the engine; or install an auxiliary tank so the engine can be started and warmed up on conventional diesel (or biodiesel) from the main tank and then switch over.

When we decided to put a bit of idealism into action, we bought an old Mercedes and began running it on biodiesel. I thought I’d begin processing my own biodiesel, but the toxic chemicals and required space were prohibitive (though even a small yard, garage, or ventilated basement would do). It’s possible to purchase it commercially, but it isn’t terribly convenient or economical (though each new convert increases the demand). In the process of figuring this out, the Mercedes began to fall apart beneath our feet.

I started thinking about other options and got fixated on late ’90s VWs. Given the rising price of gas (diesel is cheaper than unleaded and VW diesels get over 50 mpg), it was a seller’s market. When I finally came across one with a vegetable oil system already installed, offered at a good price by a nice guy, near where my parents live on the East Coast, I gulped and jumped. Visions of pulling up to the McDonald’s take-out window and asking for all their used fry oil to be dumped in my tank sealed the bargain.

If only it were so simple. A road trip isn’t actually the best way to start this new low-consumption lifestyle. It turns out that franchise fast-food restaurants need higher corporate approval to allow access to their waste (perhaps because McDonald’s lost millions in a lawsuit after animal fat was found in their supposedly vegetarian fries). Used oil has to be filtered before going into the tank, and that can be time-consuming and messy (my oily footprints are still visible on my parents’ driveway where I cleaned out and reassembled the filter system). It is also best to have a trusty source of oil, because oil that has been sitting too long, is mixed with water, has too much animal fat, or was heated too many times can damage the engine.

We had a decent amount of oil in the tank when we left Massachusetts and even supplemented it with five gallons bought at Costco. We figured we’d have to stop once a day and find a supply. By the time we reached the Upper Peninsula of Michigan we started to get desperate. We weren’t having any luck finding a suitable source, and the story of our trip was provoking more hilarity than respect. When we pulled into an isolated mom-and-pop restaurant, as usual amusement ran high, with people called out from the kitchen, office, and bathroom to listen to our request. Turned out they had a bucket of oil that they had just taken out of the fryer. We were welcome to it. Something about that oil set off premonitions, but we were so eager to sing, “We’re driving for free!” that we went for it. For half an hour it ran smooth as, well, oil. A half-hour later we were sitting in the only AAA towing garage on Lake Ontario, discussing with the kind, large proprietors other Volkswagens they’d known, why ours sounded like a Mack truck, and the best route to Escanaba, which contained the only VW dealer within 500 miles.

The problem turned out to be a minor adjustment (mechanical timing), and we were unclear whether to blame the vegetables or not. But a day was lost and our schedule suddenly seemed martial; a wedding to attend the next day and then a quick solo haul for me from the Mississippi to the Bay. Combining urgency with a dread at getting stuck in the midst of the Wall Drug advertising campaign that masquerades as South Dakota, I decided to ignore the veggie option for a while (the remaining eight states). It felt like breaking a promise.

We arrived back in the Bay Area ready to renew our veggie vows, find that busy fry stand, set up a system for easy weekly filtering, and participate in the small but growing

alternative fuels community. Next time you’ve finished with that deep fryer, consider recycling the oil.•t

Funerals were held to mourn the passing of the little Th!nks, product of a Norwegian company Ford bought in 1999 for $23 million. Citing no demand, Ford gave up on the electrics. A response from a saddened Hollywood owner published in the English-language version of Oslo’s daily newspaper, the Aftenposten: “The reason US carmakers are suppressing electric vehicles is that they are less profitable& It is more profitable for a US company to sell a small gasoline car than an electric car. So the electric is simply not offered&.”

The plot is even thicker: Ford bought the Th!nks because California’s Air Resources Board had mandated that 10 percent of a company’s vehicles must be non-polluting by 2003, and only electrics fit the bill. When the state was forced by industry lawsuits to extend the deadline and add hybrids and fuel-cell vehicles to the mix, the Th!nks became dead metal, and so did GM, Toyota, and Honda’s electrics.

But the zippy machines may still win the war: California rewrote its legislation and the automakers dropped their suits; other states are following California’s lead; and the idea of neighborhood electric vehicles is gaining ground. Sure, they take an hour to charge, but if you plug in at night, who cares? The little vehicles are already powering up and down the Strip in Las Vegas, and they’re equally well-suited to college campuses, planned communities, or in-town driving of most sorts.

Sentimentalists will be glad to hear that Ford has reversed itself again. The 350 Th!nks will be sent back to a good home in Norway, not to the Florida scrapper. And ZAP just announced that it intends to retrofit its Smart cars with a new fuel cell that runs on hydrogen converted from ammonia. Perhaps we’re plugging on all circuits at last.•t

“Procedure” means getting on a long waiting list. At present, the Berkeley dealership, which sells more Priuses than any other in North America, has a waiting list of about 300 customers. “We tell people the average wait time for a Prius is 10 to 12 months,” says Campbell. “We get the lion’s share of Priuses and deliver them in less time whenever possible.”

Toyota Motors introduced its first hybrid car to the US market in August 2000. Named Prius, from the Latin for “first,” it debuted at $19,995, and 5,562 were sold between August and December of 2000. By contrast, in one month, this July, Toyota sold 5,230 Priuses and is predicted to sell 45,000 by year’s end. The Prius has been the fastest-selling car in the country for ten straight months, meaning it spends less time on the lot than any vehicle on the market. Prius owners receive a one-time $2,000 tax credit from the federal government, and the car has won numerous kudos, including the EPA’s First Annual Global Climate Protection Award and the 2004 Motor Trend Car of the Year.

Tired of the high cost of maintaining his Volkswagen Jetta, Allen Wagner of Los Angeles first checked out the hybrid in January of 2002. “I was tired of my Jetta constantly breaking down and noticed how many Toyotas I saw on the road. I didn’t know too much about the Prius and initially went to the Toyota dealership looking for a fuel-efficient vehicle like the Tercel or Corolla. The more I learned about the Prius, the better it sounded.” After a test drive, Allen was sold. “I am a pretty big guy, six-three, and one of my concerns was head space and leg room. When I first got into the car I was shocked at how spacious it was. It had much more room than many of the SUVs I had been test-driving. It’s like a small car that really isn’t a small car.”

The Prius has a standard clean-air resin gas tank that contracts as fuel is used, so there are fewer evaporative emissions. It is classified as a PZEV (partial zero emission vehicle) by the California Air Resources Board. The electric engine is automatically charged when the car is using the fuel engine, so there is no need to plug in the vehicle. The estimated EPA fuel economy for the Prius is 52 mpg in the city and 45 mpg on the highway. The higher city rating reflects the electric engine’s low-speed efficiency and the automatic shutoff of the gas engine when stopped. In this “stealth” electrical mode, the Prius generates no emissions, and fuel consumption is cut in half. “I was very impressed by the electric engine,” says Allen. “For some reason people think that it is going to reduce the performance and power of the vehicle, but it doesn’t. I’ve gotten it up to 85 on the open road and it performs great.”

Toyota Motors recently announced plans to increase production of the Prius and is slated to release the Toyota Highlander hybrid SUV and a half-ton pickup hybrid in 2005. Not to be outdone, the Ford Motor Company has introduced the hybrid Escape SUV that looks almost identical to its conventionally powered predecessor. Within the next year, all of the major automakers are poised to follow suit by offering hybrid models of already established vehicles.

The hybrids are embroiled in controversy: a bill passed by the California Senate but stalled in the Assembly would allow a single driver in a Prius or Honda Civic to use the carpool lane. (Currently only motorcycles and electric and natural gas vehicles get that perk.) The idea, according to Democratic sponsor Fran Pavley, would be to reward drivers who choose cars with significantly fewer emissions. But the bonus, which demands that cars achieve 45 mpg, wouldn’t extend to the Escape, which manages 36 mpg, far better than similar sized SUVs but not in the Prius range. Ford CEO Bill Ford says the proposal “amounts to a ‘Buy Japanese’ bill,” and the company tried to change the bill’s language to allow 35 mpg cars in the quick lane.

Transportation experts worry that carpool lanes are already overtaxed; adding Priuses might slow the lanes further, changing a plum to a penalty. All might be much ado about nothing: since the feds provide much of the money for highways, significant changes to carpool regulations require them to agree, and that hasn’t happened yet.

Bottom line: Toyota Motor spokesman Irv Miller says he believes the company could sell twice as many Priuses if enough were available. The only problem with the Prius is its scarcity.•t