Gadgets keep you in touch. Email, voice, instant message, chat, text... At first it seems convenient, but now it's more like being attacked by a swarm of hornets. Even with my relatively primitive cell phone, a Motorola V360, the only thing keeping me from being continually bombarded with interruptions is that nobody I know knows how to IM or email me through my phone. Also, I "forget" to turn it on a lot.

So, how about a gadget that helps you get away? Today we'll talk about the LA icon, the car. The car is the next new hot gadget, after all. All the rococo embellishments on cars in the past 20 years are just icing on the internal-combustion cake. Only the hybrids and the newer Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles, or PHEVs, have tinkered with the innermost soul of the car - the power train. Even the fanciest Lamborghini Countache has to be gassed up with fuel produced by people who want us dead because that's what their god tells them. All that oil money buys many nice, long knives!

Imagine a future with electric cars: Real estate next to the freeways will suddenly jump in value (buy it now while it's cheap)! People who don't see so well will be struck more often by the newly silent vehicles! Dictators, autocrats, and oligarchs who have maintained their iron rule by selling gas to 200 million Americans, will be forced to sell, instead, to 4 billion Chinese, Indians, Brazilians, and Russians! Hmm. Well...

Still, electric cars are just so much more elegant. And consumers respond to elegance. Look at the iPhone or, indeed, any Apple product. Or Palm or Sony, for that matter. Elegance is only one of many factors, of course. Microsoft makes the most stubbornly inelegant software, but they benefit from ubiquity. Elegance would be a frill.

And, until now, car companies haven't needed elegance either, except in the highest end, and only on the surface. Attempts at elegance inside the car have not led to increased sales. See Mazda's Wankel Rotary Engine or Honda's Continuously Variable Automatic Transmission - both sweet, neither much of a crowd-pleaser. The driving experience didn't change all that much, however sweet the engineering.

But electricity and, more generally, fuel flexibility - these will change your driving experience more than sporty stripes or a hardwood dash (though maybe not as much as cupholders). Imagine fueling up for a few emergency miles by letting the car sit in the sun. Imagine plugging the car into the base of a lamppost overnight (would that be legal?). Fuel up with cooking grease, ethanol, or even gasoline (though why would you want to?).

Yes, electricity just moves the pollution from your tailpipe to the generating plant, but even a dirty old coal plant can be fitted with scrubbers, if regulations compel it. The main obstacle to any big change in carbon emissions, or particulates, or radioactive waste, or plant safety, are still corporate executives who are given bonuses for quarterly profits rather than for long-term vision. Not their fault, really, they're just pushing the lever that gets them that sweet, sweet Wall Street sugar water. Our whole financial system is geared for quick profits, for that adrenaline rush that makes investors feel like winners. We're Americans, after all. And if we can't pump our fists and shout about how we're number one, we change the channel.

So what can YOU do? Well, you could take public transit, but what if your housekeeper saw you? It would totally undermine your authority. But an electric car lets you do the right thing AND make everyone jealous. Both good reasons.

So where do you get one? Here in Los Angeles we have many choices. Local businesses like Energy CS in Monrovia, Solar Electrical Vehicles in Westlake Village, Plug-In Conversions of San Diego, and the slightly less local Cal-Cars in Palo Alto and OEMTEK in Milpitas, will convert your Prius (2005-2007, not older) right now for a paltry $8,000 to $15,000. If you just want to buy an electric car, you can get a ZapCar or a Tesla Roadster. But for where to get them, and how it all works, come back in two to three weeks.

Peter Basch