Envison sustainable transportation & solar power nowQuestPoint

Not long ago I talked with Ginny Madeiros of ZAP electric cars, a pioneer in electric transportation based in Santa Rosa, California. Ginny drives an all electric vehicle, the Xebra . You can hear our interview on

QuestPoint n The Mix.

In that conversation we envisioned a world where solar power homeowners would be able to plug their electric cars into their home’s solar power system and get the energy their car needed for the day. Well seems as if these ideas aren’t just wishful thinking. The city of San Francisco has announced a plan to build electric charging stations around the city in anticipation of electric cars to come. This is a collaborative effort between Nissan Motors, which has launched LEAF, an all electric vehicle. It is interesting to note that ZAP currently offers a solar powered line of vehicles which you can plug into a 110 outlet. The series is called Xebra Xero.

UPDATE – The United States Postal Service has awarded ZAP a contract for the design and development of an electric mail truck. US Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey recently toured the ZAP’s facilities and stated,

“I so appreciate ZAP for hanging in there all these years, knowing what we should be doing as a country. I think a majority of members of Congress, the House in particular, know that they were right and that this is where we need to be investing.
As we know, Congress is pushing to get at least 20,000 electric vehicles into the USPS fleet using a program called Edrive.org.” Here’s Jenny on the scene with Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey.

ZAP has got a lot going on. I wonder what George Jetson of cartoon fame would think if he could see how we are using technology these days. Oh that’s right it was a cartoon.

By the way ZAP also owns Thomas Edison’s “electromobile” from 1910 and the Detroit Electric brand. Seems as if electric vehicles have been around for some time now…interesting.