by Neil Young
1982 Mercedes-Benz 300CD “Miss Daisy Green”
About fifty miles from Big Sur, night fell. We were running low on fuel when we discovered that the dash lights did not work and we needed a flashlight to see the speed, oil pressure, and fuel level. We were a bit nervous because we were in the middle of nowhere and did not know the car very well, including how accurate the fuel gauge was. Onward we traveled to Big Sur, where there were no rooms available.
We continued north to Carmel and a place called Trade Winds Motel, where we stayed overnight. The next morning, running on fumes, we got another tank-full of biodiesel from a biofuel station in Santa Cruz. I remember feeling that we were really in the future. At the time, this was one of the only biofuel stations in California.
In 2006, there were 136.8 million passenger cars on the road, and the great majority of them ran on gasoline, which was priced at about $2.59 per gallon. Biodiesel cost about the same. We traveled from Paso Robles to the ranch, a distance of about 205 miles, getting around 27.2 mpg on biodiesel from recycled vegetable oil, and put only 20.3 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere. We would have emitted 200 pounds using gasoline.
1959 Lincoln Continental “Lincvolt”
CHAPTER FORTY
ears passed and the world evolved. I had become hyperconscious of the damage fossil fuels had done and continued to do to planet Earth, our home and the home of our children’s children. I was becoming obsessed. Although I had gained knowledge about biofuels, I knew there was much more to learn. My friends Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Dave Matthews were all part of Farm Aid and we all had started running our touring vehicles on it. Domestically produced and renewable, biofuels were a reasonable, if partial, solution to our dependence on foreign oil. But they had their own set of problems, too.
An argument that biofuels, such as ethanol, disrupted food supply was gaining momentum, but there was another side to that story. Sales of corn for food were holding steady and had been for years, indicating that people were not losing their food supply to fuel. The corn used for ethanol was not used for human consumption; it was used to feed cows, especially in factory farms, which are another one of the largest sources of CO2 greenhouse gases. Naturally cows are grazing animals, not corn eaters, but polluting, corporate factory beef farmers still complained that ethanol production raised the price of corn. In addition to corporate factory beef farmers, behind every campaign against ethanol, Big Oil was lurking, lobbying, and working the back rooms of Washington.
And there’s still another side. Biofuels were relatively new, still in their infancy. What we were using was the first generation. Interestingly, when government started to support biofuels with subsidies, business increased and reached the growth goals that were set. At that point, rather than continuing to support the new industry’s growth by mandating a further increase in ethanol content in motor fuel from ten to fifteen percent, the government stopped the subsidies. Folks who had invested in biofuels began feeling the pinch, and business started to decline. During that same time, oil subsidies continued unabated. The strength of corporate lobbying at work in Washington was killing the biofuel industry.
It was in this climate that I suddenly woke up one day and was a dinosaur. Looking at my huge collection of gas-guzzlers, I realized that I was in love with something that needed to be replaced, something that had become obsolete. I had turned to biodiesel but I knew there was a lot more I could do.
I talked to a friend, Dale Djerassi, my intelligent and stimulating neighbor who I have known for a long time. He argued for the viability of electric cars. He made strong points with lots of good reasoning behind them and took me to see Tesla, a new company just getting ready to produce its first electric car. The building and operation they had was impressive. I saw the batteries, motors, and bodies they were using and took a ride in one of the first prototypes with Martin Eberhard, the founder. That car was the Tesla Roadster, not available at the time, an extremely fast car with excellent handling and efficiency. Although it was a bit small for me, I was impressed with the power and the battery configuration Tesla had developed. As a result of that visit, I started thinking that maybe electricity and biofuels could work well together.
In 2007, when I decided to repower the biggest gas-guzzler in my car barn, I thought about which guzzler would be the perfect candidate. At the same time, I searched around on the Internet and found a man who made biodiesel muscle cars. His name was Jonathan Goodwin and he lived in Wichita, Kansas. I called him. We spoke for a while, and he was very enthusiastic. I liked his energy.
I can sometimes become so obsessed with a new idea that I lose perspective and start dreaming really big. Predictably, I was always very enthusiastic. That has been good and bad, and has produced mixed results over my life. I wanted to raise awareness of electric transportation and I was very high on the project, naively thinking we were going to change the world.
We settled on a plan to build a series hybrid, different from a regular hybrid because an electric motor always provided power to the wheels. The internal combustion engine would only generate electricity for long trips. For daily commutes, plugging it in overnight would eliminate the daily need for liquid fuel of any kind.
I talked to my friend Marc Benioff, a successful businessman and philanthropist, about the project. Always full of great ideas, he suggested that I make a movie about the conversion. Larry Johnson, my partner in Shakey Pictures, was ready to make the movie about repowering the American dream as soon as he heard about the idea.
Looking over my collection of old cars, I saw my 1959 Lincoln Continental. It was the most outrageous car of them all and would be perfect. It looked great on film, as I knew from Greendale. I reasoned that a big American classic car like that would attract the most attention as an electric car and would provide the most exposure. When it was new it got nine miles per gallon. Nobody thought electric cars could be big. Or old.
Larry and I planned our trip to Wichita and made an appointment to meet with Jonathan Goodwin. Our initial plan was to film the trip to Wichita in the Continental, do the conversion, and drive the car back to California to have Roy Brizio finish it after the repower was done. There was a lot of dreaming going on. By my reasoning, Jonathan was the expert for the electric repowering and Roy was the right man to finish and detail the job. His shop was convenient to me and his level of work was legendary. He was just inexperienced at the electric repowering side of the project. That was my plan, although I had not yet met Jonathan Goodwin and really had not done any research about his experience with electric conversions.
Before we left, there was a family birthday party for Pegi’s grandma at her home that our whole family attended. I took the Lincoln down there. I showed my young niece and nephews the Continental and told them it was going to be converted to an electric car. Having never even seen a car like the Lincoln Continental before and thinking about it being electric, they just stood there shaking their heads. At the time, there were no electric cars on the market.
After the party ended, Ben Young, Amber, and Pegi all went back to the ranch in Ben’s van. I took the Continental and picked up Larry and the crew, which included Ben Johnson, Larry’s son, and Will Mitchell, who followed behind the Continental in a van we rented and filled with cameras, lights, and other equipment.
My old friend Larry and I were very comfortable cruising in the old convertible. It was what we both lived for—making movies, traveling, and having a good time. It was mid-September 2007. We left for Wichita and a future beyond our imagination.
The sun was setting on the second day as we hit the outskirts of Vegas. The neon lights were already on. They are on twenty-four hours a day. The van raced ahead and caught a lot of shots of the old convertible cruising into town. With a chrome license-plate holder that said BEVERLY HILLS MOTORCARS on it and several worn decals on the windshield, we could just feel that the car had been there before. None of the old
decals said “Las Vegas, Nevada,” specifically. In the right front seat, while he was holding his camera and shooting, Larry did his voice-over, kind of a newscaster-interviewer personality, shooting me driving the car with the splashy backgrounds of Vegas floating by behind. We were having a blast even though we were not smoking or drinking. We stayed focused, busy doing what we loved. It took a lot of concentration to drive the old Lincoln in a straight line, as it was a little out of alignment and tended to wander on the road.
As we passed by, Larry commented on the many new buildings and empty lots, as well as a huge dark old hotel that was no doubt about to be blown up and replaced by a new one. The giant building was where Elvis Presley had played his first Vegas shows. Such was the way of progress in Las Vegas. Out with the old and in with the new.
The Continental rumbled along, taking this in, no doubt noting that it was much older than that aging hotel, now slated for demolition. We were beginning to feel that the Continental had a soul, memories of the past and feelings about where we were going and what we were doing. Spending a lot of time with a car can do that. The Continental had a fiery spirit about it, and we could feel it.
Like it was a key to the past, a magic memory potion, older folks just opened up when they saw this car. It drew them like magnets. When we arrived at the Hoover Dam, one person who remembered the Continental when it was brand-new was instantly transported back to the past. He enthusiastically led us to the edge of the parking lot where we had stopped and pointed over the wall to the reservoir’s cement bottom, hundreds of feet down.
Speaking with a deep Alabama drawl, he said, “Back then, this all used to be full of water right up to the edge here,” pointing just a few feet from where we stood. “Carp were right here swimming around the surface. They used to be visible from right here. We came and looked at ’em every time we passed through.”
He paused as if he were looking directly into the past, and we all stood there, staring a long way down, hundreds of feet, at the dry concrete floor. Things were really different now. The old Continental was a little worn-out and aged, but it was still here with us. The water he talked about was gone.
There was a little moment of silence, and then we said good-bye, walking back to our cars. After a while, Larry and I started the Continental and left for Kingman, Arizona. Again, we filmed the turning of the key, the accelerator being pressed, and the tailpipe for fumes. A lot of soot was coming out during start-ups, causing a floating black cloud.
Outside of a Napa Auto Parts store in Kingman, Arizona, we watched an oil-tanker train roll by for what seemed like forever, while Will and Ben were replacing a headlamp in the old Lincoln. An employee came out and stood, watching the tanker train with us. “Four or five of those go by every day,” he commented.
The train was well over a mile long and every car was the same. Long black oil tanks on wheels rumbled by, clickety-clack, boom-boom, boom-boom. We watched silently. The headlamp was fixed and the Continental breathed a sigh of relief. “That feels good,” she said quietly.
We headed for Route 66, my old friend the Mother Road, where America traveled west in the fifties. This was the road I had traveled in the old hearse to California! When we finally got rolling on it, we saw a lot of old gas stations boarded up and surrounded by steel fences. Closed motels, abandoned in the sun, stood with open doors creaking in the breeze. A large Standard Oil Products sign could be seen from about a mile away, the paint peeling from it as it barely stood on two giant steel poles and gave slightly to the wind.
Tumbleweeds rolled by a deserted adobe fuel station and gift shop covered by Indian graffiti. Navajo was painted on the adobe wall. Windows on both sides of the old structure were smashed out and gone. I drove the Continental off the road and watched a tumbleweed rolling over the sand behind the station. The desert vista was clearly visible through the broken building. This had been a big fuel stop, really a lot more than just a gas station; this was a travel center with all kinds of articles for the traveler, including a big family restaurant, but it was all gone now except for the ruins.
Back when gas was cheap, people drove all over America, chasing their dreams and taking family vacations in their new cars, stopping for the night with their kids and staying in motels along the way; motels decorated like Indian teepees with swing sets out front and nearby drive-in movies. I thought to myself, one day all of these gas stations will be gone. Things that are taken for granted today can easily be gone tomorrow. Time can do a lot. I wondered what would replace gasoline. We traveled on toward Colorado and then through the Rocky Mountains.
• • •
STAYING ON TWO-LANE highways really gave us a trip full of feasts for the eye. Small mountain towns and awesome mountain peaks covered in snow flew by between gas stations and fill-ups. When we finally got through the Rockies, we arrived at a place called Trinidad in a rainstorm and sustained our first mechanical failure: a windshield-wiper arm had dislodged itself from its revolving post and was badly stripped so it could not be reapplied.
Larry’s exuberance was unique. I can still remember his voice as he described Black Jack’s Steakhouse in Trinidad, a former brothel with bedrooms upstairs. Larry had found it and he was very excited, reading aloud from the menu with great enthusiasm. Checking in, we each had our own rooms named after ladies of the night, and some of them had four-poster beds. My door had LILY written above it. I had a four-poster.
We ate steaks downstairs that night where there was a good salad bar and a real bar.
Upstairs on the floor with all of our rooms, there was a kitchen at the end of the hall where Internet reception was good. Later that night, we were all there with our computers, communicating with home and planning the trip. A lady walked in and asked us how we were doing. One thing led to another. She told us that Trinidad was the sex-change capital of the United States; she was in town for her operation and had originally been a man but was unhappy leading a man’s existence.
Larry told her what we were doing with our car, that we were going to electrify the old Continental, changing it from gasoline to electricity using a biofuel generator, noting that she, too, was making a big change, and asked if we could interview her. “Sure. I am an ethanol scientist and I am very interested in what you are doing,” she said. It was during the interview that she told us she thought we should ask permission from the car before we made the big change. That made sense to us, although we had never thought of it before.
• • •
I HAD BEEN GIVING her dashboard an occasional pat and talking to her for a few hours when I asked her for permission to make a change to her drivetrain. Traveling down a Kansas highway at sunset, the idea came as a bit of a surprise to the old Lincoln. We had begun to think of her as feminine. Larry filmed as I talked to her about what we were planning to do, explaining what a great future it would bring. We got the feeling that she was nonplussed by the idea. Shortly after that, the Continental had electrical problems and we lost all lights except the headlights.
The next day, when we finally arrived in Wichita and met Jonathan Goodwin, nicknamed “Johnny Magic” by his Wichita friends, we found he had a very impressive garage. We were optimistic about getting the car on the road as a series hybrid. Work started immediately, and after a few days Larry and I went back to California with Will and Ben and left the Lincoln in Wichita with Johnny Magic, thinking we would be back soon and everything would be done. Before we left I told the old Continental her new name was going to be Lincvolt. We figured the repowering of the Continental would take a few months.
Johnny Magic had a way with metal
Had a way with machines
One day in a garage long ago
He met destiny
In the form of a heavy metal Continental
She was born to run on the Proud Highway.
—“JOHNNY MAGIC”
It was a big dream. In the end, noth
ing for the repower was ever completed in Wichita, but there was a lot of experimenting. Delay upon delay piled up. The months dragged by. The years dragged by. We kept filming and trying to complete the transition, but nothing seemed to work. We made mistake upon miscalculation, attempting to build a clean, efficient drive system to power a big car. Two and a half years into the project, after trying many different ideas, ranging from water-gas power to vaporized fuel systems and giving them all a good shot, trying in vain to get high mileage, all we had was proof that an onboard generator could recharge the batteries while we were driving down the road. A proof of concept. Lincvolt was still just an idea, not a working car.
We left Jonathan Goodwin’s garage in Wichita and moved the project back to Brizio’s in California in early 2010. During this time, I had toured the world playing concerts and completed three records, traveling back to Wichita with Larry and our crew in between.
With gasoline priced at $2.35 per gallon, vacillating wildly from year to year on its overall steady climb, I had recorded a song called “Fuel Line,” featuring the choruses “Fill ’er up” and “Keep fillin’ that fuel line.” I was writing and performing a lot of songs about Lincvolt and the subject of electric powered cars. Fork in the Road, the album we made, was released in 2009. A lot of people were pissed that I made an album about that subject and I got bad reviews, but it was what was on my mind and I can be obsessive. Being obsessive is not such a bad thing for creativity.
• • •
TIME CONTINUED to pass for the project, mostly in trying to find the right generator system for a heavy car, and by 2010, with work going on at Brizio’s installing a turbine generator, I found myself in Hawaii with Pegi, getting some rest. I flew back to California for a short trip to be with my friend Conan O’Brien on his final Tonight Show. Upon my arrival in Los Angeles, I learned Larry Johnson had passed away from a heart attack. My lifelong friend was gone without warning. It was shattering news.