Conscious Choice Seattle: Drive Time

Brave, new and necessary world

There were Smart Cars zooming around the Microsoft campus in Redmond—it felt like the entrée into a brave new world.
In May and June, Cascadia Center and Microsoft teamed up to sponsor a two-day/two-month conference called “ Future Trends in Energy, Technology and Transportation.” The event focused on high gas prices, over-reliance on foreign oil, climate change, and heightened concerns over port security issues. On display were such energy-efficient cars as the Smart Car (thegreencarco.com), CalCars (calcars.org) 100 MPG modified Prius and the futuristic AFS Trinity (afstrinity.com) concept car, illustrating the Extreme Hybrid with plug-in drive train technology capable of 250 miles per gallon.
That sort of gas mileage would change the oil crisis.

Featured speakers included an impressive number of U.S senators, including Maria Cantwell and the former CIA Director, James Woolsey.

Just as interesting as the speakers themselves, were the more than 250 diverse attendees at the conference. Yet the number of women was notably low.

"It is exciting to see so many people interested in these issues and fighting for them,” said Darby DuComb, a manager with the City of Seattle, who is actively working on the hybrid electric school bus project, anticipated to start rolling next year.
Intermixed with city officials and policy directors were doctoral students—skipping class, plus foreign investors, longshoremen, the CEO of the HumanCar, a 4-person vehicle where passengers work in tandem as pistons, and even a filmmaker working on his next independent film, “Power Shift,” formerly titled “Hostile Dependency.”

There were presentations on underground vacuum tunnels with frictionless trains and chilling homeland security issues. It was enough to convince anyone that fiction never holds a candle to reality.

During her keynote address, Cantwell admitted this summer we will probably see higher than $3.50 a gallon gas prices—maybe even going as high as $4 or $5 a gallon.

"Wouldn’t that necessitate the change that we would like to see?” she asked.
Maybe.

But Cantwell hopes that we can facilitate change in a more planned and less reactionary way.
"Be bold as a country,” she concluded. “Get off foreign oil and plan a new future."

Outside in the drizzle, Cantwell, owner of a biodiesel-powered TDI-Jetta, test-sat a Smart Car, and checked out the plug-in CalCar modified Prius and a TDI Jetta that runs on vegetable oil. She admitted that her own process of deciding on what type of fuel-efficient car to buy was not easy.

Susan Fahnestock, general manager and co-owner of The Green Car Company (see main article), pointed out that there are a many considerations to make when choosing the best car for your lifestyle and values.

For example, what concerns you more: resource depletion or global warming? If global warming is your issue then biodiesels, with an 80 percent reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, would be your type of cars.

Worried about resource depletion? A Smart Car or a hybrid might be a better choice.

"It is all part of the same puzzle,” says Fahnestock. “There is not one answer. It is not just about what car you drive—drive your car less, take the bus more."
—R.R.

July 2006 | Feature

Drive Time

As gas prices stall more than a few summer vacations, our adventuresome writer tests the new Smart Car

By Ritzy Ryciak

If you have ever dreamed of double takes, second glances or more excuses for one-on-one conversations with strangers—step into the Smart Car.

This midget-car, first popular in Europe and engineered by Mercedes, measures in at eight feet long (or four feet shorter than a Mini Cooper) and almost four feet wide. It is the length of a tandem bicycle—and there is nothing else quite like it on the road.

"Where’s the rest of it?” asks one interested onlooker peeking inside the passenger window.

I am parked outside of a neighborhood grocery store—in need of milk—and a small crowd has gathered around my on-loan Smart Car. Since getting behind the wheel of this diminutive vehicle I have been honked at, winked at and asked out to dinner. In the parking lot, conversations jump from gas mileage to making out.

"Single guys aren’t gonna like this one,” says a spry 88-year-old man, referring to the two-seater coupe. “How ya gonna get a girl in the back seat of this thing?"

We ponder those words while assessing the “trunk” of the Smart Car and its storage space. Groceries could be a tight squeeze in here.

On the drivers side of the Smart Car, another man wonders how he would ever get his black Lab and American Eskimo dogs into the cab with him.

"They would never fit in here,” he says on the way to his minivan. He cites $6 a gallon gas as his breaking point for a smaller car.

The Smart Car is the most fuel-efficient gas-powered car on the road today, and is the third-most fuel-efficient vehicle in the U.S. It gets an estimated 40 to 55 miles per gallon, and is powered by a three-cylinder, 61-horsepower turbocharged engine. The diesel version available in Canada and Europe is even more impressive with fuel efficiency ranging from 60 to 75 miles-per-gallon. The Smart Car can cruise to up to 85 miles per hour and the cab is surprisingly spacious—you don’t feel like you are driving a golf cart.

Compared to most cars on the road, Smart Car’s gas mileage numbers are impressive, but if you drive a diesel TDI Jetta (gets about 55 miles to the gallon) like I do, its fuel efficiency isn’t the real deal-maker for this car.

Instead, it is the sweet parking spaces you can squeeze into throughout the city.

"If you are someone who is in the city a lot, it is really nice,” agrees Don Fahnestock, the sales manager of the Green Car Company, one of the first ZAP Smart Car authorized dealers in the nation and the only one in the Northwest. “You don’t need as much space. You can wedge it."

From Europe to Seattle

In April, the Green Car Company, a local source for biodiesel, electric and other environmentally friendly forms of transportation including The Xebra (electric car), and Volvo Diesel conversions, hosted a rally to introduce the Smart Car to the Seattle public.

At this point, most Smart Car clients are people who tracked it from Europe, according to Fahnestock. “Maybe they rented the car in Europe, they like the design and they knew when the cars were scheduled to come to the U.S."

Smart Car dealers hope that the wee car will catch on in a similar way that the Mini Cooper did. In addition to improved gas mileage, the Smart Car is free of poisonous metals like lead and cadmium and 95 percent of the car is suitable for recycling.

"I really like how cool and different they are,” says Fahnestock, who commutes 10 minutes to work in his own Smart Car. “I like the drive of it. It responds well and it doesn’t feel like you are driving a three-cylinder vehicle."

Knowing that the Smart Car is a Mercedes product, Fahnestock admits to feeling safe on the freeway or not: “I don’t feel any intimidation factor driving next to a big SUV."

Smart Cars range from $26,900 for a hardtop to $29,900 for a convertible.

Fahnestock points out that at the very least the Smart Car gets people thinking in a different way.
"Even going back a few years ago all the craze was SUV’s,” he says.

The Smart Car takes people in a dramatically different direction.

"Obviously it is not the answer [to our entire oil crisis],” says Fahnestock. “But I don’t know that there is one single answer—except for walking or riding a bicycle. If we could just get our minds thinking differently we might come up with 100 new ideas."

For more information about Smart Cars in the Seattle area, check out www.greencarco.com or call 425-820-4549.

Ritzy Ryciak is a regular contributor to Seattle Conscious Choice. She wrote the green weddings story for the June issue.

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