Green Vaporwear, Hucksterism, and Electric Cars- Wired Magazine Unloads on Zap!

Holy crap did Wired Magazine just unload on electric car company Zap!. It sounds like the company is run by a couple of shady hucksters who have enriched themselves at the expense of their customers, employees, and franchisees while screwing things up for all the real green car companies with their constant over promising and under delivering.

Here’s an snip, head over and read the whole article which Wired was kind enough to post in full to their site.

Over the years, ZAP has taken millions from investors and dealers eager to see the company’s line of green cars hit the road. But that line has never materialized. Of nearly a dozen groundbreaking eco-vehicles ZAP has promised in public announcements and on its Web site, only the Xebra and its sibling, a truck version, have ever made it to market. As a result, fans of electric cars have grown disillusioned, while individuals like Youssef have been financially devastated. What’s more, investment firms around the country have become cautious about financing electric vehicles after being repeatedly misled by one of the industry’s most visible companies.

In spite of all this, the pair now running the company, Starr and CEO Steve Schneider, enjoy lucrative employment packages that have made them millions. Their compensation — and ZAP’s continued existence as a business — heavily depends on the continual issuance of new stock shares. And although ZAP has earned an annual profit only once in its 16 years of existence (even that was the result of a one-time debt conversion) and its stock has been delisted from the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, and the Pacific Stock Exchange, Starr and Schneider have managed to keep ZAP shares from becoming worthless. They’ve achieved this almost entirely through a relentless flow of press releases in which ZAP describes itself as “a world leader in electric transportation” and constantly claims to be on the verge of innovations and business deals that will yield breakthroughs in green transportation — claims that consistently fall short.

None of this would be possible without the optimism and naïveté of those eager to put their faith in the electric car future. When it comes to green technology, some people just want to believe. It’s easy to see why: Electric cars, after all, don’t run on gas, so they produce virtually no emissions. They do consume some fossil fuels, since they charge their batteries from the grid, which mostly uses coal and natural gas to generate power. But because electric cars are more efficient than gas cars at turning energy into miles, their carbon footprint averages out to be 50 to 90 percent less than that of traditional vehicles. (And that figure drops to nearly zero if the car is plugged into a renewable energy source like a solar panel array.) Electric cars could decrease dependence on oil, reduce global carbon emissions, and save consumers money. But while Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Ford, and General Motors all toyed with electric vehicles in the ’90s, these companies had effectively ended development by 2003, when California stopped requiring automakers to offer zero-emissions vehicles. Since then, electric car enthusiasts have been forced to pin their hopes on small independent companies — like ZAP.

“They tug at your heartstrings,” says Joseph Gottlieb, a ZAP dealer from the San Diego area who has filed an official complaint against ZAP with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “If ZAP was in any other business, the company would have been dead long ago. But they keep taking advantage of how much environmentalists — like me — want to see electric cars come to market.”

The lesson to be learned here: Greenies are easy to rip off if you tell them you’re trying to save the world.

Link [Wired] via [EcoGeek]