Marysville students ponder a life without oil

MARYSVILLE — The sleek and eerily quiet sports cars in the Marysville Arts and Technology High School courtyard Friday weren’t just tantalizing eye candy for car buffs.

For many students, the gas-engineless, all-electric Tesla Roadsters were part of a long-range lesson into reducing humankind’s dependence on oil.

“These are cars of the future, basically,” said Principal Terri Kaltenbach.

Over the next three years, students concentrating on manufacturing and engineering at the school are mulling the question: What happens to society when the oil runs out?

They have been looking for ways to conserve and create energy and to better use dwindling and renewable resources.

Teachers at the school say their students are coming up with some creative ideas.

Sophomore Kim Wagner and junior Amanda Vitcovich, for instance, are suggesting biodegradable meal trays for take-out fast-food outlets. It would reduce drastically industrial pollution and energy consumption, they said.

Classmates are proposing such things as wind generators along busy highways, floor tiles that recycle light energy and pedal-powered computers.

Those ideas and research reports will be judged in May by a panel of judges that will include college professors and representatives from the Snohomish Public Utility District and the Future of Flight aviation center.

For inspiration, the school invited the Seattle dealer of the Tesla Motor Car Co. to share their all-electric cars with students.

Tesla, a Silicon Valley-based automaker that began vehicle development in 2004, has delivered Roadsters to customers in 43 states and 19 countries. It recently produced its 1,000th car. The company operates 10 retail outlets in the United States and Europe.

The company brought its Tesla Roaster to the school for a kind of cutting-edge show-and-tell.

The speedy cars sell for more than $100,000 and can go more than 240 miles on a $5 charge. Company officials said the electric Tesla Roadster accelerates from zero to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds yet produces no tailpipe emissions,

The company’s plan is to produce increasingly affordable cars for mainstream buyers, eventually including subcompacts, said Lance Merkin, a Tesla sales adviser.

“That’s our goal,” he said. “There is nothing more fulfilling then taking people out of gas cars and putting them in electric cars.”

While students admired the plug-in car for what it could mean to the environment and energy conservation, they also liked to imagine what they would look like behind the wheel.

“I’d sure like to take a spin in it on the freeway,” said Greg Evensen, a junior

Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446, stevick@heraldnet.com.