10 QUESTIONS for ET's RemyC
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| Remy Chevalier - Electrifying Times |
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Long time electric vehicle and clean air advocate, RemyC is well known in the industry as the intellectual philosopher visionary guy behind the scenes at Electrifying Times - promoting the advancement of clean technology, green lifestyle, no nukes, Route 66 renewal, and by his own thought provoking vision for a Manhatten Project for energy, --all expressed passionately through a collection of blogs, mags, calendars, PR, pretty women and good causes. (Mention beautiful girls and EVs to Remy and he'll tell you that gorgeous girls and fast cars together is the absolute best way to get peoples attention regarding zero emission cars and the sexy side of clean energy).
Recently, RemyC met up with the young and lovely race car driver, Ashley Van Dyke, at the Tesla Motors Showroom in Santa Monica. You can see Remy's photo-story, Chasing EVs in LA, posted on Electrifying Times. Read on ...
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| Throughout Space There Is Energy - Nikola Tesla |
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1. What are your best ideas for promoting EVs and EV ownership?
A: That's a funny question. Some people get paid a lot of money to answer questions like these, yet because I'm a journalist, I'm expected to hand it all out for free, so some marketing and PR professional can read this interview, say: "Hey, this is a great idea!" and then capitalize on it rather than give me a call, and say, "Hey Remy, great idea, want to join the team?" So I don't know if I want to answer questions like these anymore. This said, the tried and true always works in the automotive industry, doesn't matter if you're selling gas guzzlers, speed monsters, or green wonders. A pretty girl will always help your image! Half the automobile magazine covers on newsstands and television shows revolve around a beautiful, often smart woman, with both appeal to male and female interest, for different reasons. EVs have come to be associated with the green lifestyle, which is something EV old timers, still have a hard time grasping. So until the long time members of the Electric Auto Association build a bridge to the green economy, they won't be able to benefit from its popularity.
2. As Ed-in-Chief for Electrifying Times, what are your goals, aims and solutions?
A: I'm not ed-in-chief. That's Bruce Meland, publisher and founder of Electrifying Times. Bruce and I met back in 1993. At first I helped him edit the magazine by fax, started submitting story ideas. I became east coast editor, then in 1998, took over website duties. I'm listed on the masthead as ed-at-large and webmaster. I always wanted to see Electrifying Times grow into becoming the Hot Rod or Low Rider of EV Kar Kulture. Bruce Meland and Electrifying Times was one of the first sponsors of electric drag racing in Oregon. But we're not getting the support necessary to grow the magazine into a full blown newsstand attraction. There's not enough sponsorship money yet. Not enough National Electric Drag Racing Association (NEDRA) members to write articles and take pictures, and when they do, it's for more established mainstream publications. There's not enough EV industry interest yet in supporting a niche publication like Electrifying Times. I'd love to see the same artistry as found in Juxtapoz or High Times illustrating stories. Maybe now that the likes of Tommy Chong and Neil Young have embraced electric vehicles, more counterculture artists will come to discover electric cars as an interesting topic of illustration.
3. What do you expect most from EV manufacturers in the USA?
A: Better design, more real life applications, more aggressive cross-promotion with other green market industries... Too often inventor, engineer and investor huddle into a mode thinking "if we build it, they will come" and it doesn't work that way, only in the movies. If you build it, that's only half the work. Bringing people to your product, creating a sense of desire, is the other. I think we've done a great job over the years at Electrifying Times to generate that kind of buzz around certain vehicles... but it's something we've done on our own, and quite often, even against the will of these EV companies, who think that a green car has to be so politically correct, they sap all the fun out of it! Like the [Venturi] Fetish in Monaco, who then refuses to lend the car to fetish photographers! I mean why did they call the car the Fetish if it wasn't to take advantage of the fetish photography community? Its schizophrenic PR, and that's why the Fetish was left in the dust by the Telsa, because while the Tesla never really openly embraced the Nikola Tesla cult of personality, they also never did anything to discourage it. It's hundreds of thousands of Nikola Tesla fans out there creating all the buzz about the car. Naming the car the Tesla was a stroke of marketing genius! David Bowie recently played Nikola Tesla in the movie the Prestige. They should ask him to pose with the car for a promotional poster, it would be grand!!! And I'm sure he'd do it in a heart beat! It's so steampunk!
4. What EV do you put at the top of your personal wish list, and why?
A: The Tesla, bar none, because it's an amazing car, with painstaking attention paid to detail. It's built an extraordinary fan base, every girl in LA dreams of owning one... and all the guys who bought them, can't wait to hand over the keys to their girlfriends! That's what roadsters were made for... Cruising for chicks... I'm sorry if that offends some people, call me ol'fashion, but that's the way the world works. You don't change human nature overnight... There's a cult of the automobile in America, in most Western nations. If we're going to rid ourselves of our gasoline addiction, we must transfer that cult to better, faster cars, and if that happens to be a super fast electric car, like the Tesla, double whammy! That's the only way we're going to break the price point and trickle down the technology to more affordable passenger vehicles.
5. Person or persons who inspire you most?
A: Howard Hughes, because people don't yet know the half of his life, they haven't figured it out... and they will, in time, but there's a lot more to this man than the official history told. Bill McDonough, even though Fast Company is dumping on him right now. I've met the man, and here too, there are underlying motivations for his vocation which haven't come to the surface yet. I don't think Bill is fully aware of the implications of what he has set in motion, He has tried to capitalize on them in an awkward fashion. I guess my grandfather, Georges Gurdjieff, because he brought to the West a new medical scientific understanding of religion and spirituality, even though the vernacular wasn't ready in his lifetime, he managed to convey his knowledge to individuals who carried it through to this Century, where electronic[s] and machines can measure what he already knew existed in our bodies. What man will do with this knowledge worries me, because it can again be used for good or evil. Psychotronic weapons are in great part a result of his contributions to black ops. It's not an easy legacy. Black Sabbath, because at a time when everyone was lost in hippy fantasies, they told it like it was. Their first albums were all about how man was destroying the environment with war and technology. The system sucked in Ozzy, but the others in the band are still fiercely revolutionary. I can't wait to see the original members get back together for the Resurrection tour, if anyone can get Van Jones's green collar economy going, it's the Sab! Neil Young, and that's relatively recent... I owe it to a friend opening my eyes to who and what this man is all about. He's merging cross cultures, young and old, he's a survivor, and a visionary. I've tried meeting him now for the last two years, without success, which frustrates me no end... I hope he comes across my work and comes to realize how closely we're walking the same side of the street. There's many others, but these are the ones who first come to mind.
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10 Questions for RemyC (continued)
6. How do you see E.T.’s part in promoting green mobility for the USA?
A: We call ET an "intel" operation, because it's not overt... it hasn't been about quantity, by virtue of our lack of resources and capital, it's been about quality of information, and bringing the right information to the right people for over a decade now through the ET Yahoo Group list serv, and networking with a multitude of seemingly unrelated communities, creating a genuine EV culture. We didn't go the corporate route, we went the counterculture route, hoping EVs would come to symbolize change, not just a business opportunity for the same corporate America. We know where there are some extraordinary energy conversion technologies which are not getting all the attention they deserve, for still murky reasons. We need a Manhattan Project for energy, and Electrifying Times is smack in the thick of it, with a direct line to most of the inventors we would push into a hangar and throw away the key until they all agreed on a methodology. We can't count on established labs like MIT to release the best they have. They keep that ace in the hole, and the planet can't wait for another world war to roll out our best guns!
7. What electric drive-train technology impresses you most, and why?
A: None really, I think that's another weak point, like the batteries, and the motors, it could all improve so fast with great capital influx. The vehicle that impressed me the most, was the Luciole... it wasn't the EV-1 which convinced me EVs were the future, it was the Luciole in 1997... a design precursor to the Tango. That team created the Kaz and the Eliica, which could be the future of limousines in California. That I know, they have yet to put an actual vehicle into production, which is a crying shame come to think of it. We need to get all this going...
8. What can you to say about your visit to the Tesla Motors showroom & EVM?
A: Their showroom is beautiful, an ideal location west of Beverly Hills, right off the main highway leading into the hills. The staff is made up of bright, very attractive women... Tesla knows their market... They're going to sell so many of these cars to Hollywood types, but they need to crank up the production. The company needs to bring certain people on board they haven't had the courage to assimilate yet. They're suffering from the fishbowl effect. Once they're more comfortable with their position in society... they'll open their doors to those who are really going to take the car and the company to heights they themselves could have never imagined. Think "Iron Man"! Here again, there is a lot more going on with the company, than the company itself knows. The Tesla is the subconscious dream of many, many people. It's a symbol, and symbols can never die, they live on, they grow, they mutate, they take on a life of their own. The Prius became a symbol, the Scion xB, the VW bus and beetle, the Ford Mustang, the Shelby... These are more than just cars, they are cultural symbols. Once Tesla comes to understand who the inventor was who they named their company after, they're going to be in for some major surprises. And it's all good.
9. Are there any plans for E.T. to publish a monthly hardcopy magazine?
A: None really, many people say print is dead. So many top titles are losing 20, 30% of their print readership, it's all moving online. It will save paper. But there will always be a place for beautiful print magazines, fashion magazines, photography magazines... there's still many viable titles left on newsstands. But for ET to be a monthly in print, considering we can barely put out one newspaper print issue a year, it's a pipe dream. A quarterly would be nice, and redevelopment of the website into a showcase for the EV lifestyle, wild, colorful...
10. How do you think a failing economic system will impact the future of EVs?
A: It would actually be beneficial, because necessity is the mother of invention... if oil stops flowing at the pump, or is so expensive, nobody can afford it, one good way getting around cities, is electric vehicle retrofits. It's coming, Kustom Shops*... like Rev. Gadget... or Jonathan Goodwin in Wichita, kustomizing EVs for freaks and celebrities, trickling down to the masses. Roderick Wilde keeps threatening to get out of the business, but then every time a TV station pays attention, he's back in force. These guys should work the counterculture more to reach new customers, forget the mainstream, they'll only come around once the trend setters make it cool. Our mission should be to put as many rad looking electric cars in as many fashion magazines as possible. The automotive press is so entrenched, it doesn't care about the planet... it will have us burn gasoline till we have to wear a face mask on the Ventura freeway. I think we can turn it around, but it's going to take a lot of balls, and batteries, and motors, and pretty girls! ;o)
More: http://www.remyc.com/
*Village Energy footnote: BTW, in addition to Rev. Gadget, and the other amazing EV Conversion guys Remy mentions, I would like to add my friend Abran Quevedo to the list. Abran is a retired high school auto shop teacher who is not only running successful instruction courses to teach others to teach others about EV Conversions, but for the past few years or so, he has been converting cars one at a time at his San Diego home-based EV Conversion Co-op (in genuine need of a commercial premises -- any backers)? The idea is to provide as many ev conversions as possible, specifically for low-income drivers and disadvantaged people who might not want the coolest car in town, but they want a reliable form of transportation that won't cost the earth to run. Abran Quevedo and alll of the EV Warriors distinguished others out there doing EV Conversion are our real patriotic heroes in the most revolutionary grassroots movement I know of. Real patriots Kick Gas! - http://www.villageenergy.com/villageenergy/evconversions.html TATA Generation (quick philosophy): Go from gross polluter to protector of the planet: http://www.villageenergy.com/villageenergy/tata.html
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| Nikola Tesla - Father of FREE Energy |
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| Abran Quevedo - Going the 'rat' direction |
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