A fitfully interesting case study of the collision of alternative
technology, big business, and government. Automotive business
writer Sherman (In The Rings of Saturn, 1993) here turns to the
inspiring example of a young man named James Worden, an engineering
graduate of MIT, who had for years been obsessed by the thought of
building an energy-efficient, safe, and affordable electric car.
Armed with moral support and sweat equity from college friends who
shared his vision, he founded a company called Solectria, which
made several commercial automobiles, including the whimsically
named Force and the user-friendly Sunrise. When the Big Three
automakers found out about Worden's work, Sherman alleges, they set
to work trying to get a comer on alternative-energy legislation
(their efforts to bring an electric car to market have been
extensively reported on by Michael Shnayerson and others). These
companies effectively edged out Worden, who survived in the market
only because, in the wake of the Gulf War, the Pentagon decided to
examine the prospects of building energy-efficient electric
vehicles to serve under battlefield conditions. Regrettably,
Sherman has trouble separating the meat of his story from
incidental details, and especially from unrevealing, often
irrelevant excursions in automotive history. The resulting
narrative is patchy at best, plodding at worst - a misfortune,
given the intrinsic merits of the story. For Worden's vision
remains attractive; who could resist, after all, the promise of a
vehicle in which, "instead of hundreds of precision-engineered
moving pans operating at high temperature, there were a motor with
one moving part and a controller with no moving parts"? In the
hands of a Tracy Kidder, this story might have become a model of
literary journalism. In Sherman's hands, it fails to move. (Kirkus
Reviews)
Led by a young engineering graduate, James Worden, a group of MIT students started an electric car company in 1989 that today produces the cleanest car in America. The company is called Solectria, and this book chronicles the story of its evolution into a small but significant player in the world market for clean cars. In an age when car production is growing worldwide, the company provides a model for preserving clean air for future generations.
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