News from The Washington Post:
by: Jason Ukman
On a sprawling horse farm southwest of Frederick, Staci Penrose plunged a metal hook into a bale of hay and yanked it off an eight-foot-high stack, letting it tumble to the floor of the riding arena.
Then she heaved the bale not onto a tractor or the bed of a pickup but into what resembles a space-age golf cart, a neighborhood electric vehicle. It hummed so quietly as she drove her load into the barn that the horses hardly turned their heads.
The little electric car, which has no internal-combustion engine, uses no gas and plugs into a standard outlet to charge its battery, has long tooled around the gated communities of Florida and Southern California and, more recently, in suburban subdivisions and retirement villages across the country.
In this area, they are making their way out to the country.
Neighborhood electric vehicles, or NEVs, are sold in very limited numbers here -- and sales representatives say many of them end up in rural developments or on horse farms in Maryland and Virginia. The result is a distinctly modern touch to the pastoral landscape.
Kim Stewart, who owns the farm in Jefferson where Penrose works, bought two NEVs in December and sold the gas-powered golf cart she used previously for hauling. One of the new vehicles has a flatbed and carries 500 to 600 pounds, she said, allowing the two women to crisscross 200 acres, moving hay and bedding -- and even leading horses -- between barns.
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