If you had told me in 1997 that one year later I would be an internet
addict, riding around on an electric bike promoting electric vehicles in the
US and going for a spin with a Hollywood actor/activist Ed Begley Jr (pictured right with Bill Clinton in The Simpsons) in LA in his state-of-the-art zero-emission car, I wouldn't have believed you. I was an actress - RADA
trained and all that, no time for computers which were things I reluctantly used in between
acting jobs in some grey, dull anonymous office in London. I had played the
gothic girlfriend of cybergeek Danny O'Brien in his acclaimed West End show
Caught in the Net back in 1994
but that's as far as my relationship with the internet went.
Well, as a non-smoking, non-car driving fitness enthusiast I have never understood why the general consensus of opinion with government backing has quite rightly shifted against tobacco while the right of it's partner-in-crime, the internal combustion engine (ICE) to pollute remains unassailable.
It is particularly annoying and frustrating to be forced to alter your breathing to shallow or hold your breath as cars, taxis and buses race past. Mothers with babies in small pushchairs, ( See BubbleBuggy - the
wondrous air-cleansing pushchair), no doubt empathise. Out running when my lungs are oxygen hungry, just one lungful of tailpipe emissions is particularly repellant even if it's belching out the back of Papa and Nicole's Renault 5 or the Citroen Xsara Coupe from which Claudia Schiffer throws her silky knickers. Er, sexy is the last thing I feel.
Considering that vehicle exhaust is responsible for 51% (See statistics on campaign page of the filth in our air, 80% in cities and contributes to the 25,000 deaths a year in the UK alone from air pollution-related diseases, you'd think there must be a smart, clean alternative to the filthy internal combustion engine which has been kicking around for over 100 years. Surely in the age of the microchip, the ICE.car should be a museum piece by now?
If like me you rely on the press, car companies etc. for information on cutting edge, practical, advanced clean transportation technology you'd be forgiven for thinking that there were indeed no alternatives.Indeed until 1998 I was of the same opinion.
Then in January 1998 I got a life changing call from my brother: "Check out this really cool,slick American electric bikewebsite called ZAP!"
