When electric car technology started poking its head into the mainstream in the 1990s, I thought the idea name for an electric car should be "Heifetz." First of all the name means jewel in Hebrew, and second of all Jascha Heifetz was a pioneer in the field of electric car technology. In 1967 he spent $5,000 to have his Renault (which was a $2,000 car) converted so it could run on batteries. It was the first electric car on the West Coast. He did it to try to help the environment.
This photo of him in his Henney Kilowatt electric car is from 1976.
I actually wrote to a few car companies to present my idea of naming an electric car for Heifetz, but nobody seemed interested. What kind of world do we live in anyway?
Every once in a while I have to remind myself that Heifetz was not perfect. This collection of Heifetz stories has few that were new to me.
2 comments:
looks like a Henney Kilowat made by Eureka in 1960
The Heifetz car was made by Bob Borisoff. There had been a thousand electric cars on the west coast before this one was made. As an example the Beardsley was manufactured in Culver City in the mid teens.
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