Pulling out the Jay Game

Celebs to race Ford’s electric cars on Jay Leno’s new show 1

Jay Leno has a history with electric vehiclesJay Leno’s electric slide began long before the “Green Car Challenge.”Photo: Alan Light via FlickrOn his new show, which launched Monday night, Jay Leno will flaunt to the world his crush on electric cars.

Leno’s show will feature the “Green Car Challenge,” wherein celeb guests race against each other in specially built Ford electric cars for the best lap times on a specially built race track. The first guest in the hot seat will be Drew Barrymore (an obvious guest to kick things off, since we all know she likes riding in cars with boys), when she appears on the show Friday, Sept. 18.

Ford is pumped about this primetime opportunity to plug its Focus BEV (Battery Electric Vehicle), which is due out in 2011, and is eager to show that unlike some Detroit automakers, it didn’t kill the electric car.  Instead, Ford wants the public to know how fun! fun! fun! it is to drive electric cars and dispel any myths that they’ll leave you and your family stranded in a bad part of town at night far, far away from any recharging stations. These all-electric cars, unlike hybrids, will be totally reliant on lithium-ion batteries and will be able to zoom around for 100 miles on a single charge.

No word yet on whether NASCAR driver and all-around-badass-green Leilani Munter will be invited by Leno for an electrifying spin around the track this season.

The science and multimedia-loving Ashley Braun writes, tweets, and Facebooks for Grist. And sometimes she does this for herself. You should follow her on Twitter, but not in real life. That’s called “stalking,” you creepster.

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  1. Paul Scott Posted 9:44 pm
    14 Sep 2009

    Just a fun fact regarding your comment that Ford is "eager to show that unlike SOME Detroit automakers, it didn’t kill the electric car."When our group initially began to protest the crushing of the electric cars, it was Ford we targeted first. They were crushing the Ford Th!nk, a small electric city car made in Norway and imported to the U.S. so that Ford could use them to satisfy the California zero emission vehicle mandate.We were successful in stopping Ford from crushing all of them and today, about 300 of those original Th!nks are still driving around Norway. Ford did have to send them back since they were here for three years only due to a variance from the feds. Of all the carmakers in the ZEV program, all of them were trying to destroy every EV they made. The guilty ones include: GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda and Nissan. Today, every single one of those companies is racing to get their new plug-in cars to market. We may have lost a few battles back then, but we're going to win the war.EVs are vastly superior to gas burners. Once you all get to try them, you'll never go back to burning gas.

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