If nothing else, politics is about showmanship, grandstanding and appearances. If you've ever watched a Congressional hearing on C-Span you might have noticed that members of Congress tend to spend a lot more time speechifying than actually asking questions of the witnesses and listening to answers. I think it's safe to say that new Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY) will fit right in. For his trip from his upstate New York District to DC earlier this week for the new session of Congress, Massa decided to set an example by driving down in a zero emissions vehicle. General Motors' fuel cell research center in Honeoye Falls sits in Massa's district, so Massa decided to drive a fuel cell Chevy Equinox from his home in Corning to Washington.
The problem is that the Equinox has a maximum range of about 200 miles and it's about 280 miles from Corning to the Shell hydrogen station on the outskirts of Washington. To get around this little unfortunate detail, Massa drove from Corning to Harrisburg, PA where a second, fully-fueled Equinox was waiting. That second vehicle was towed from the DC hydrogen station behind a Tahoe hybrid. At the changeover point, the Tahoe hooked up the used Equinox and towed it back to Honeoye Falls. Just like other "zero emission" vehicles transfer their emissions to some remote location, this one transferred emissions to the Tahoe hybrid. Not a jet, but most certainly not zero emissions, either.
[Source: New York Times]
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