The place is Buck's of Woodside, a Silicon Valley café whose slogan is "flapjacks and tomfoolery". Executives from the area's technology and venture capital companies frequent the whimsically decorated restaurant, alongside characters clearly inspired by California's 1960s counterculture. Felix Kramer, an entrepreneur-turned-environmental activist, is expounding on his favourite topic: electric cars, and the big carmakers' reluctance to build them commercially until they are cheaper and more reliable. "If the cell phone companies had said they wouldn't make them because they weighed as much as a brick and would cost $1,000, we wouldn't have them now," he declares. "It's arrogant to say you won't build the version 1.0 car until it's perfect."

Mr Kramer's pressure group, the Palo Alto-based California Cars Initiative (CalCars), has been taking matters into its own hands. The non-profit group dispenses advice on retrofitting Toyota Prius cars to convert them into plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), which are capable of driving longer distances on battery power than conventional hybrid cars.

(Por By John Reed, Financial Times, 08/01/2008)