"History is a wonderful thing, if only it was true"
-Tolstoy

Thursday, April 03, 2008

ZAP..ed

One (maybe among others) that electric cars are not taken seriously.
Just outright fraud

Hype Machine: Searching for ZAP's Fleet of No-Show Green Cars

"By early 2007, Kim, Scheder-Bieschin, and Brandao had all resigned their positions. Brandao filed a sexual discrimination complaint against ZAP with the state of California, alleging that she had been underpaid because of her gender and that Starr had verbally abused her.
Scheder-Bieschin says that Starr and Schneider have been insulated from criticism because of the business they are in. 'Steve plays the game that nobody's ever gonna be tough on us because we're the EV guys.'' (Indeed, Robert Taicher, a consultant for ZAP, called Wired editors as this story was in process, asking the magazine to tread lightly on ZAP, given that 'we're in the green space.') 'Gary Starr and Steve Schneider have likely done more damage to the EV industry than Detroit and the Japanese combined,' Scheder-Bieschin says. 'And the failure of this industry to thrive has affected everything from global warming to the war on terror. How do you put a price on that?'
Brandao thinks the EV industry itself bears some responsibility for ZAP's depredations. 'Nobody wants to talk about how bad ZAP is,' she says. 'Everybody wants the EV space to be protected from scandal or bad publicity.'"

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