I’ve had several people ask me if I know the identity of the mystery owner of the flashy white, yellow, orange and red electric car seen around town this summer.

The mystery was solved late last week.

Beth Langer, Northfield High School class of ‘07,
is the proud owner of this rare 1981 Jet Electrica. Another Jet owner, Dave Anderson (no relation to yours truly) of Corvallis, Oregon, writes of his similar car “Th[e] Jet Electrica was originally manufactured by Jet Industries of Austin, TX, which produced about 3,000 EV conversions while they were in business. Most Jets were based on Ford Escort and Mercury Lynx chassis purchased new as from FoMoCo as “gliders” (body and chassis without engines). To convert the Escort to electric, Jet mated a Prestolite 96v traction motor to the original Ford transaxle, fabricated battery boxes front and rear, and added a speed controller and an on-board battery charger.”

Beth has been driving her Electrica, which was re-manufactured from a Mercury Lynx body and chassis, since the last day of school this spring. She and her father Linus purchased it with 13,900 miles on the odometer from a battery dealer in St. Paul, who had garaged the vehicle for the past 15 years. She’s using it daily this summer to commute the eight miles (one-way) from her family’s home to work in Northfield. She reports the range is about 35 to 40 miles (she tested the limit once and ran out of juice!) when the rig’s 16 65-pound batteries (front and rear) are fully charged. Beth says that, while acceleration is not great, she can keep up with traffic on Highway 19.

Battery charging is complete in several hours, and I plan to put a watt meter on the car soon to determine what the electricity consumption (and cost and pollution related to that electricity generation) per charge and per mile is.

It’s interesting that the last national surge of interest in electric cars was in 1980-81, which (coincidentally, I’m SURE) was the last time oil and gasoline prices spiked, during the Iran-Iraq War. The more things change, the more they stay the same…

In California, zero emissions vehicles were mandated in 1990 legislation (2% of California’s fleet by 1998, and 10% by 2003). The website for the movie “Who Killed the Electric Car” goes on “…GM launche[d] its EV1 electric vehicle in 1996. It was a revolutionary modern car, requiring no gas, no oil changes, no mufflers, and rare brake maintenance (a billion-dollar industry unto itself). A typical maintenance checkup for the EV1 consisted of replenishing the windshield washer fluid and a tire rotation.

But the fanfare surrounding the EV1’s launch disappeared and the cars followed. Was it lack of consumer demand as carmakers claimed, or were other persuasive forces at work?

Fast forward to 6 years later… The fleet is gone. EV charging stations dot the California landscape like tombstones, collecting dust and spider webs. How could this happen? Did anyone bother to examine the evidence? Yes, in fact, someone did. And it was murder.”

Beth plans to run her Electrica in this year’s Defeat of Jesse James Days Parade. She will be joined by a host of other folks under the RENew Northfield banner, riding bikes of all descriptions, and driving hybrid electric cars, biodiesel and waste vegetable oil-powered cars, pickups and tractors. If you would like to join us in this “greener transportation” parade unit, please contact us.