The CitiCar Capital Of The USA (And Perhaps The World): Browntown, Wisconsin

There’s an electric car revolution underway in sleepy Browntown, Wisconsin, population 252.

More than six Sebring-Vanguard CitiCars, many zipping down the country roads in southwestern Wisconsin, are registered to owners in this small town – most to Phil Welty and one to myself.  They come in red, yellow and several other colors and look like a wedge of cheese, but they’re all completely powered by electric motors.  It’s estimated that as few as 600 CitiCars are still on the road in the U.S. with less than 3,000 manufactured by Sebring-Vanguard between 1974 and 1976 during the last energy crisis.

“When I first saw the CitiCars back in the 1970s, it was the only all-electric car on the market,” recalls Phil Welty,  “The same problem exists today as in the 1970s, like high fuel prices and our marriage to foreign oil.  I’ve always wanted to bring one back from the junkyard and restore it to fully operable condition.”  Not content with just one, he has two CitiCars on the road, using his other cars for parts.

• » See also: Is the Renault-Nissan Alliance Going in Two Different Electric Car Directions?
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While funky looking, the CitiCar is quite practical for a runabout vehicle around town.  I use mine for short trips to the bank, an eight mile round trip, then plug it back in to be recharged with a .5 kW off-grid photovoltaic system.

“Vehicles will have to eventually run on renewable energy,” says Ben Nelson, a successful gasoline-turned-electric-motor car enthusiast from Milwaukee who owns a 1977 CitiCar.  “For the most part, that means electric, because so many forms of nature can be used to generate electricity. You can’t make gasoline from a windmill or solar panel.  Hybrids are a good start.  They run on gasoline, but they got people thinking about better fuel economy and how we can use electric motors.  Unfortunately, the mainstream car manufacturers have been teasing us for years saying that electric cars or hydrogen vehicles are just around the corner. Then they continue to sell us the same old same old.”  It’s exactly this kind of thinking among automotive execs that turned GM into “USGM,” largely owned now by the American people, as I pointed out in a previous post.

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