Alt Car 2007: The miniskirt and the Electric Vehicles panel

There a palpable difference in audience members who attend panels on hydrogen cars and those who go and listen to speakers talking about battery electric vehicles. The enthusiasm of the people at the Santa Monica Alt Car Expo's hydrogen panel on Saturday (which you can hear and read about here) was simply outshone by that of the people at the EV panel just an hour or so later. Aside from the true H2 evangelists, people are simply more excited about pure electric cars than hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. This may change as fuel cells become more of a reality in the customer's mind, but for now EVs are where it's at.

As for the panel members, they admit to being battery agnostics, and have good stories to tell. From Victor Juarez, of Electro Autos Eficaces de Mexico, we get the details of the major electric car project going on in Mexico City (read more here). AC Propulsion's Tom Gage gives us some of his history with Martin Eberhard before Eberhard went off and started Tesla Motors. The panel was moderated by Dean Taylor of Southern California Edison (standing in the photo).

And, yes, the miniskirt comes up a few times in the discussion. This is the car they're talking about, the Zooop.

Listen in.

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