6/2/2008
NEVs now legal on Appleton city streets
Appleton's Common Council recently removed prohibitions that heretofore did not allow these zippy little economical, Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEVs) on city streets. In a recent memo (page 6), Assistant City Attorney Stacy Doucette, described the holdup:
Back in March of 2007, the Common Council adopted Ordinance 19-11 pertaining to neighborhood electric vehicles. Wisconsin State Statute 349.26 had given municipalities the authority to enact an ordinance that allowed the use of neighborhood electric vehicles on roadways within the municipalities (sic) jurisdiction that have a speed limit of 35 miles per hour or less. However, a discrepancy in the law regarding the registration of the vehicles existed when the Common Council adopted the ordinance. Due to that discrepancy, language was included in the ordinance that the ordinance would not be effective until the registration discrepancies were resolved.
Recently, Governor Doyle signed into law a bill that cleaned up the discrepancies. The bill, now known as Act 33 requires that neighborhood electric vehicles be licensed by DOT. Since the discrepancies have been eliminated, the language that currently prohibits the use of neighborhood electric vehicles can be eliminated.
FoxPolitics has written a couple of times about the “GEM” car (Global Electric Motorcars, LLC, a division of Daimler Chrysler located in Fargo, ND), at the urging of hearty electric vehicle advocate, Appleton resident Bernie Coley.
In Wisconsin, NEVs must operate at 35 mph or less and nationwide, per GEM, the vehicles must be “equipped with turn signals, mirrors, a windshield wiper, seatbelts, brake lights, headlights and taillights.” (The Wisconsin law specifically excludes golf carts.)
Here’s what we wrote in November, 2006, about the GEM:
These little things are nifty. Check out the various GEM cars available, from a 6-seater to a one-seat model with a little wagon in the rear for groceries. Most are equipped with six 12-volt batteries.
You decide if the limited “around town” capability is just too limiting. Pretty small. Pretty low speed. Dangerous – maybe? Only 15 to 30 miles before you need to recharge. Probably not too warm and not too good with ice and snow. BUT… the GEM Car web site calculates a cost of driving 200 miles a week at $2.80, or $146 for a full year ($.10/kwh). Pretty nifty indeed.
So nifty that you need to go to Portage to buy one – or one of only a few dealers in Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois or Indiana.
Coley’s recent research has centered on a Wisconsin made (!) NEV – and she’s anxious to get her hands on one. Columbia ParCar Corp. in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, 800-222-4653, expanded its line of golf and industrial vehicles to NEVs in 2000 – and hasn’t looked back. Well, they’re not looking back - but apparently are taking their time looking forward as well. Finding one of these little darlings is like pulling teeth. Coley has learned that the “stocking dealer” in our area is MEE Material Handling Equipment, 2500 Tower Drive, Kaukauna, 766-5521. Also suggested by Columbia (because they typically have more stock on hand) is Pete’s Auto Repair in Waupun (not Pete’s here in Appleton), 501 E. Main Street, Waupun, 920-324-3465. (For those of you calculating, that's four to six gallons of gas to get there and back!)
Thanks to Ms. Coley’s pushing and cajoling, we’ll be seeing these little economical environmentally friendly things on the streets of Appleton in the summer months to come (winter is another thing…). Great.
Jo Egelhoff, FoxPolitics.net
COMMENTS
There is a cult following of a tv show from back in the early 60's called The Prisoner. If you were not from Britain you would scratch your head as to where the location of the show took place. It was a community in which all the cars were electric. It turns out that The
Prisoner was filmed entirely on location in Portmeirion, North Wales. It's a vacation community built to an entirely different scale for tourists.
NEV's remind me of Portmeirion.
Current thinking on this, at least in the more rational circles, is that vehicles like electric cars adapt to the car culture rather than seeing cars as the problem in need of a solution. The maintenance of the road system and infrastructure itself is at the saturation point.
As an issue of lifestyle, yes a few may be able to afford a Portmeirion car as a fun vehicle. Like a doctor who owns a Miata and a Mercedes.
But the space relationship between the neighborhood and sources of services
such as food stores, health and shopping (yes, shopping is necessary even for the sustainability crowd) are themselves the problem.
Aside from the regulations concerning electric cars, let's look at the zoning and the way neighborhoods and services fit together rather than as isolated from each other. This in itself will reduce the energy, time and convenience of living together.
Communities in constant growth for growth's sake take on the hidden costs of infrastructure and services on an ever expanding scale. It winds up coming out of the pocket not of the developer but the tax payer.
Cows don't go to school.
I love this phrase. It says it all. Leave the cow pasture to the cows, build and develop better not bigger communities from the center out and then and only then will the NEVs have a meaningful place in communities.
Lon Ponschock (Mon Jun 02 11:52:14 2008)
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