George Ow Jr., head of the family that owns Kings Village Shopping Center, has a morning routine.
He drives down to Steamer’s Lane to go boogie boarding for a couple of hours, then to a local cafe for breakfast, maybe a store or two for a little shopping, and finally heads home.
For years, he drove the 5-mile loop in his eight-cylinder Mercedes-Benz. Today, he takes the same route, but leaves the Mercedes in the garage.
His new around-town auto is the tiny ZENN Car, an electric two-seater that Ow unabashedly refers to as “the future.”
Initially dubious about environmentalism, Ow said he was convinced after hearing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speak in Santa Cruz in January.
“He said that in 10 or 15 years, all cars will be electric,” Ow recalled. “Even with the technology we have now, we could fuel all the cars in the country with a solar farm that’s 85 miles wide and 85 miles long. If we also had wind farms, we could be off all oil and coal.”
He said Kennedy told the crowd that Israel plans to buy electric cars and give them away to citizens, then have the motorists pay to exchange nearly depleted batteries for fresh ones. The plan will get Israel off foreign-produced oil, which threatens its security, Ow said.
The same kind of idea, he contends, could work for the U.S.
“Getting off oil would get us out of wars,” he said. “I hate that we are over there (the Middle East) because of oil. We wouldn’t be there if they didn’t have oil.”
Another of Ow’s concerns is that there is a finite supply of petroleum. “We won’t run out of oil during my lifetime,” he said, “but what about my grandchildren? Would it be like ‘Mad Max’ and we are down to the last dregs of our oil?”
Ow’s dark-blue ZENN (which stands for Zero Emissions, No Noise) is one of about 20 in Santa Cruz County, he said. It has a 35-mile range on a charge, but because its top speed is 25 miles an hour, it isn’t suited to highway or freeway use.
“You have to have two cars,” he said. “But since most of my driving is in town, the Mercedes will stay in the garage for several days at a time, and since I drive it mostly on the freeway, the mileage has gone up from 17 miles per gallon to 22 or 23.”
On average nationally, 80 percent of car trips are close to home and suited to a small electric car, said Bill LeBon, co-owner of the local ZENN dealership at the Green Station, 433 Ocean St., in Santa Cruz.
ZENN, which manufactures its cars in Canada, plans to soon introduce a four-door four-seater, LeBon said. In their converted gas station, LeBon and two partners also sell electric scooters and bicycles as well as biodiesel fuel.
One day, according to co-owner Tim Mayo, they envision a showroom that’s a center for eco-friendly transportation, with information on area hiking and biking trails and related activities.
Meanwhile, ZENN owners can enjoy smiles and cheers from observers as the car glides by silently.
“I like it a lot,” Ow said. “People seem to be excited to see me coming, and it’s a lot of fun.”
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