Everybody knows about Toyota’s Prius, a hybrid car that gets around 55 miles per gallon. But with me being a teenager, most of my male peers who are at all interested in cars, are interested in ones that go really fast, and look cool. A department where at least in the second case, the Prius obviously lacks. This may give the overall impression that alternative energy vehicles cannot perform well in those categories. But this is not so. On the “going really fast” front, the Prius goes 0 to 60 in 9.8 seconds, according to a Motor Trend article. I don’t know how good or bad this number is, but since Ferrari’s are generally accepted as “fast” cars, here are a Ferrari’s numbers. The Ferrari F430 can go 0 to 62 in 4.0 seconds, according to a document on the Ferrari website. So this may conclude that the Prius is rather slow (I have no idea, for I know nothing about car performance). This is not the case for all alternative energy vehicles however. The Tesla Roadster, a rather expensive sports car from the new Telsa Motors is fully electric, gets the equivalent of 135 miles per gallon and, more importantly, goes 0 to 60 in “about 4 seconds” according to the Tesla Motors website. This is very close to the Ferrari F430, and seems rather impressive. If time is on my side for the next year-and-a-half, and I don’t find something else to do, I may pursue converting an older car to be 100% electric. It appears to be a rather involved project, and the resulting car may not have very good range, but I’m going to do some research on the subject and see how feasible it is.