Submitted by Hugh E Webber, Apr 15, 2007 21:54

I am a pedalcab owner/operator in Orlando, Florida; our City Council has waited over six months to see how NYC regulates pedicabs before passing its own ordinance. Our local (Mears) taxicab near-monopoly has not funded local politicians to kill our 100-cab service here. Yet.

I am also a vocal advocate of highway-capable battery-electric vehicles (EVs,) such as the hot Tesla Roadster. Today, General Motors quibbles about mass-producing its Chevrolet Volt electric-drive hybrid; two years ago it crushed the last of 1165 GM EV1s that it grudgingly made available (only by closed-end lease) in the Southwest ten years ago. Offers to buy every one of GM's EV1s only accelerated their crushing; two EVangel activists were arrested trying to block transporters hauling the last 50 surviving EV1s to the Mesa, AZ crusher.

For more on zero-emission EVs, see EVWorld.com. For more on NYC pedicabs, see PedicabNews.com.

Internal combustion engines are so last century. Still, automakers, their dealers, the oil industry and now taxicab groups are pouring money into politicians' pockets, paying lobbyists and lawyers to attack highly-efficient vehicles and funding PR campaigns in defense of their right to pollute our air with impunity.

Pedicab and EV opponents don't care that their favored industries make their own grandkids asthmatic. Thanks to the cult of short-term profit in the US auto, oil and transportation industries, respiratory disease is now common and Florida's shoreline is starting to shrink.

The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones.

Breathe free, drive EV and use pedicabs.

Hugh E Webber Earth Shuttle Pedalcab www.pedalcab.us

Electric Auto Association http://www.eaaev.org/

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