AltCar Expo Santa Monica

Granted the newer car technologies - hybrids, electric, natural gas and converted diesel are so much better for the environment, and if all of us were smart, we'd get one!


In rolled about 25 cars - Nissan Leaf,Toyota RAV EV, Mercedes e-cell, Chevy Volt, Toyota Prius Hybrid Synergy Drive, and the very newest, Tesla which were on view and some of them test-driven.

Tesla was only for show....

The Chevy Ecco cars made by GM, were the least expensive (with incentives from the State of California) - with Spark starting at around $18k, but is about as small as they come.

Nissan Leaf are all around....but they require hookups to charge. Again, a small car, but
it has a lot of great features. This is a hugely popular car, especially in Europe.

Leaf EV is driven by a police force in Portugal and they have a range of about 100 mile per charge and can get up to 90 mph.

The most tricked out displayed belonged to Toyota, and the sales team asked me immediately if I wanted to get on video describing my feelings about electric cars for a bottle of water. Not really.

They had cut in half their RAV EV model...which looks a bit weird this way.

Then came the real innovators.....kids from Santa Monica High, calling themselved Team Marina converted a VW Bug into an electric car.

And then explained how they combined the batteries.....exponentially adding to the power of the car.

Here are the details...

And the little engine that could, came from the Peterson Museum - which was a converted Honda Civic, re-created in the 1970's by a group in Los Angeles....It was tiny....but still drove and what a concept that might have been way back then.

Brought to you by Waller from the Peterson Car museum....

Get used to seeing this.....

It's a sign of the times...

Enjoy.