It's been a busy week. I finished my other project (it went well), I had my wisdom teeth out, and now I'm packing to leave. I've talked about ZipCar before so I won't explain the way it works again. I signed up because it cost me basically nothing (aside from driving costs) but I haven't used it much because Carly has had a car here at MIT that I could use. Now that car is at home and I needed to car to get all the crap out of my office back to my apartment to pack. When I was looking at ZipCar I noticed they now have a RAV4-EV. That's a fully electric car, no gas at all. I decided to take that one and see what it was like. I rode in one before because Illah has one he took us in when we worked on that robotics project, but this time I got to drive it.

There are a lot of questions people ask about this car. It can only really go about 70 miles to the charge. Although I don't think that is what's bad about it. I think the problem is that it takes 6-8 hours to charge and the only place you can charge one of these cars right now is in its own parking spot. It is totally quiet when you start it and it is amazing that it actually moves when you try to pull out of the parking spot. The rumor that it is all battery is not true. It's an SUV and it's got plenty of people and cargo space.

They don't make it anymore because there are problems with it and it didn't sell. Even when they did it was only for Californians because of that state's strict emmisions laws. Illah actually had to lie and say he lived there, have them install the charger there, and then uninstall it and move it and reinstall it himself. He would have to go back there to get it serviced. I guess ZipCar got a special deal. It makes sense since ZipCar's model of people taking a car for short amounts of time/distance and always returning it to the same spot goes well with the limitation of this car.

It was pretty fun to be driving the future. I don't think electric cars are quite there yet, but I think I want to buy a hybrid now. It's funny because I was just talking about hybrid and electric cars with someone. The way gas prices are these days I bet everyone will want to.