Remember when electric cars only went 20 mph and ran out of juice after ten minutes of uphill driving? Those were the days. Steve Schneider is the CEO of a California company called ZAP that sells electric vehicles - not hybrids mind you, real honest-to-goodness electric cars - and it sounds like they might actually be useful for say, driving from one place to another. Even the tiny weird-looking ones are kind of sexy, and the prototype electric SUV he describes may be the perfect vehicle for both road-rage crazed soccer moms and tree-hugging hippies.

Hopefully this is another one of those cases where the environmentally
friendly option doubles as the smart business decision. A few days after I interviewed Steve I actually saw a striped Xebra electric in the wild, so I know he's sold at least one. Fingers crossed—Jonathan Coulton

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