I've always wanted to say this and now, thanks to new British electric car start up, Stevens Vehicles Ltd, I can: "Get into Zevan and come with me to the casbah." There is now an alternative for Brits who want a domestically-manufactured electric car but don't want to wait a year or spend 150,000 quid on a Lightning GT. Actually, two alternatives because Stevens is not only going to produce Zevan, the sexy beast (and I use that term loosely) you see pictured above. Nay, also on offer is the five-door, five-person Zecar. But why stop there? Zecab is yet another variation on ze (zero emissions) theme and is currently on ze drawing board. Further down the road there are plans for zeconvertible, zepick-up, and zebeachbuggy according to the lengthy article in the Telegraph announcing the company's launch.

56 miles is the cordless distance the first batch of vehicles expect to eke out of their sealed lead acid gel batteries and the top speed will be 56 mph. These numbers should improve in the future when lithium ion and other battery technologies become more established. The company website states they are "leading edge, not bleeding edge."

Tony Stevens, the automotive engineering brains behind the outfit has ambitions far beyond his factory in Wales. His is a vision that extends world-wide to communities in developing countries everywhere via a manufacturing concept, Global Village Transport (GVT). Now, about that casbah.

[Source: Telegraph.co.uk]

Of course, train travel has the potential to be one of the greenest forms of travel around. And, the best part of it all is that the more people on the train, the better! What I mean is that the emissions of the train can be spread over a larger number of people - people who might otherwise be driving.

Now, the depot at Machynlleth for Arriva Trains in Wales has gone one step further by adding solar panels and a wind turbine to generate the depot's electricity. They also have added a water harvester to reduce the amount of water that the depot will consume. Our source article tells us that the new depot is just a few miles from the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales, which makes sense, huh! Let's all hope that other stations will follow this fine example.

[Source: IC Wales]