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...interview that his reputation as a Noriega henchman is undeserved--that he remained in the Noriega government only to help negotiate the general's departure. As for the drug charge, he says that while he was Panama's ambassador to Colombia in 1986, he sold a car to an auto agency that he only later learned was owned by a drug lord...
California, with the nation's filthiest air, was the first to adopt a radical strategy--ordering automakers to produce zero-emission vehicles. And, as the country's largest auto market--with 1 of every 7 cars sold in the U.S.--it has the clout. Six years from now, under California rules, 10% of new cars offered for sale--about 100,000 a year--must be exhaust-free. But even with the deadline so close, only GM and Honda Motor Co., have been bold enough to target consumers with their electric cars. Other automakers have focused on government and commercial fleets...
...raves from auto writers and customers alike for the EV1's elegant engineering, its spaceship smoothness, and its intoxicating acceleration--0 to 60 m.p.h. in 8.5 sec. "My customers are fascinated," says Michael Monti, who parks his car in front of his Tempe, Ariz., restaurant. Beverly Hills realtor Constance Chestnut drives clients around in her EV1 because "it's hot and sexy." Hawthorne Savings Bank attracted $1.5 million in deposits from customers after it advertised its newly installed electric-car chargers. EV1 drivers have even founded a club and a Website. "This is no martyr mobile for environmentalists," says club...
...seven years since California set a 1998 deadline for carmakers to begin marketing zero-emission vehicles, oil companies and auto manufacturers have lobbied to kill any mandate. They succeeded only in postponing it, to 2003. Similarly, carmakers took New York and Massachusetts to court. In recent months federal judges have handed down contradictory decisions: one barring Massachusetts from duplicating California's mandate, and the other allowing the Empire State to force manufacturers to offer some 8,000 electric cars for sale next year...
TAKE THE T-BIRD AWAY After 80 years of dominance by the internal-combustion engine, a new kind of automobile is on the way. Several major auto manufacturers are designing hybrid electric cars that have twice the fuel economy and half the carbon-dioxide emissions of today's vehicles. The sticker price is admittedly a few thousand dollars higher but is largely offset by lower fuel bills. Toyota plans to bring the first such car to the market in Japan this week, and other carmakers will soon follow suit (see following story...