West Philly Students and the Car of the Future

Written by  Jeremy Proffitt

[Philadelphia Inquirer] Lisa Jackson could only grin in amazement as she climbed into the driver’s seat of the best little car that West Philly — and maybe just about anybody, anywhere — has ever made. She was at the West Philadelphia High School Academy for Automotive and Mechanical Engineering, and the red sports car, the Hybrid K-1 Attack, has been proven to get 60 miles per gallon on biodiesel and has get-up that will make you go-go. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new administrator, formerly head of New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection, was in town earlier today and made it a point to come to the school to congratulate the members of its Hybrid X team... “Ideas like these will determine our country’s future,” Jackson told the students and an assortment of dignitaries, from Chaka Fattah to Lisa Nutter. Noting that the nation’s auto industry was “in a little trouble right now,” Jackson told the students, “you are the key to the ideas that will bring them into the future.” She said they were clearly “ahead of the curve. You know first-hand that we don’t have to choose between a healthy green environment and a healthy green economy.