Eco Auto Inc.: A Little Zenn in Bozeman, MT
Meet Ron Gompertz, the owner of Eco Auto, Inc. - an electric car dealership in big sky (and even bigger truck) country.
Me: What kind of cars do you sell? Can you talk a little about the cars? Ron: We carry the ZENN, Miles, Evader scooters, SNUGG electric bicycles, and Smart cars from Mercedes Benz. Me: They're not all electric vehicles, then, and not all cars, either. Ron: No. After we thoroughly investigated the "alternative transportation" market, we selected the best available in terms of quality and value in each category. Here in Bozeman, as you can see from the snow picture (scroll down the page a little) - we also had to select our vehicles for their "four-season-ability". Being in Montana has its advantages, though... ...the overhead is low, so we can give you a very good price. 
(Yes, I had a little something to do with that legislation! There's the governor signing the bill into law on the roof of our Zenn.)Me: And the gas-chugger? Ron: We carry the Smart Car because it gets higher mileage and has lower emissions than just about any other car on the planet. Me: Most electric car owners have a "hybrid household" anyway; one NEV and one very efficient ICE machine for the longer trips. Ron: You can get both of those here at Eco Auto. And speaking of "hybrid households"...well, remind me later. Green cars shouldn't need to cost lots of green, and driving a small car shouldn't require making big sacrifices in ride, comfort or safety. How long have you been in business?
Ron: Eco Auto Inc. opened on September 20th, 2006. I wanted to be downtown where people actually walk around, not on a road outside of town surrounded on all sides by car dealerships selling pickup trucks. The city of Bozeman, like most towns, has a heavily regulated and zoned business district, and understandably, they don't want car dealerships in the middle of quaint downtowns. State rules require a service bay for auto dealerships. It was hard to find a good legal location.
I took over a derelict old filling station on a high profile corner in Bozeman's historic district, fixed it up, painted the outside green, and re-named it the Eco Auto "no-gas" garage. Then, 6 months later, I got kicked out when the owner decided to convert it into a luxury condo building. I moved a 1/2 mile down the street where there was another old gas station this one sandwiched between a used car lot and the Community Food Co-op. I used eco-paint to cover up 40 years of greasy walls, bought chairs from Herman Miller made of recycled materials, put a realistic turf flooring made from recycled plastics in, screwed LEDs and compact florescent bulbs in our track lighting fixtures, and then mounted 1000 watts of photo voltaic panels on the roof to power everything. We're easy to find - located just west of downtown Bozeman on Main Street, right next to the Community Food Co-op. Shipping
Me: If I'm too far away to drive my new electric car home from your dealership, can you get the car to my house? Ron: We ship all over the US by bonded, insured company Accelerated Logistics. Depending on distance from Montana, we charge $1,000 or less, door to door. Other Stuff
Me: What was your first electric car? Ron: My first real electric car was a little "slot car" that I built for my 6th grade science fair with my friend Myron Segal. We used a drill to cut a groove roadway in a 4 x 8 piece of plywood and then tacked down two strips of Reynolds Wrap foil (stolen from my mom's kitchen) to create the positive and negative contacts on each side of the groove. We then made two cars our of balsa wood and a small electric motor. We came in third place in the fair, behind a volcano and a distillation apparatus. Me: A volcano beat you? You were robbed. Me: What made you get into the electric car business? Ron: I sold a business and moved to Montana from San Francisco in 2004. My daughter had just been born, I saw "An inconvenient Truth", and a few months later "Who Killed the Electric Car". Then I saw a preview of the ZENN at a local Sustainability Fair. I opened Eco Auto two months later. Me: Before we close, what were you going to say about the "hybrid household"? 
Ron: Right. Well, have you heard of "Chrismukkah"? It's a fake holiday my "hybrid household" pretends to celebrate. We did a website about it that got a fair amount of media attention, and I wrote a book.
Me: I went to the website. The cookbook sounds fab - I've been LOOKING for a recipe for gefilte goose. (You can go to chrismukkah.com by clicking on the picture; )
Visit Eco Auto Inc. at:
Return from "Eco Auto" to MT-WA electric car dealers
|
