Car protest continues

Wednesday 19 January 2005

fumes

US environmental campaigners have entered the fourth day of an extraordinary protest against Ford, over the attempted recovery of electric vehicles leased by the company. EV owners Dave and Heather Bernikoff-Raboy, Bill Korthoff and a host of pro-environment, human rights, medical and renewable energy groups are urging Ford to allow them to purchase their leased Ranger EV trucks - in line with original contract arrangements – in the face of the company attempting to end the leases.

The campaigners are holding a round-the-clock ‘car-sit’ at Downtown Ford in Sacramento.

“I am outraged by the termination of Ford’s electric vehicle program,” said Heather Bernikoff-Raboy. “The technology is practical and available now. Over my three and half years of driving an all-electric pickup truck, at least one hundred people asked me, ‘Where can I get one?’. And that’s just from one person driving one EV truck.”

“If Ford were serious about breaking America’s oil addiction, it wouldn’t be trashing its fleet of zero-emission, zero-oil electric pickup trucks,” added Jason Mark, a clean car campaigner representing the human rights group Global Exchange. “Ford needs to make a u-turn and restart its electric vehicle program.”

The protest follows significant campaigning against the company in America during 2004.