Remy Chevalier and his Scion xB pose in front of the National Route 66 Museum in Elk City, Oklahoma. (Photo courtesy of Remy Chevalier)

I grew up in France where my dad took me to see a Western at the movies once or twice a month. It was our night out. I grew up wanting to be a cowboy, worshipping Gary Cooper, Steve McQueen and later Clint Eastwood.

My favorite Western of all time is Duck You Sucker with James Coburn. That movie made me want to “be” James Coburn. The closest I ever came to meeting my favorite actor was in the mid-70s, in the Hollywood Hills, looking for his house, making a stupid U-turn in the middle of a curve, James barreling around the corner in his Dino Ferrari, nearly crashing into my beat up ’57 Cadillac and giving me the evil eye! So I can say I looked James Coburn in the eye, and that’s enough for me; I can live with that (few people can say they had James Coburn staring down at them). He drove off and I never sought him out again. I figured that was my moment in time.

In my twenties, I hitch-hiked all over America; it’s how I traveled back and forth from the East to West Coast. I wanted to be an actor (I still want to be an actor), but my obsession with saving the planet kept getting in the way. My obsession drove everybody nuts and still does. My dream was to blend the two, and today, you have a Green Hollywood, and the whole world finally gets it. I feel like I have got nothing else to do now but retire and let the younglings take over, but not until I show them a trick or two. I’ve never been one to escape to Katmandu. I find my God looking up at the sky, seeing the trees and not the road. I love the road, don’t get me wrong, but I know tires and asphalt were a conspiracy of Firestone. I also love the Jetsons and Astro Boy.

That’s when it dawned on me; Route 66, go west my friend, two and two together. I wrote a letter to the editor of Route 66 magazine about bringing electric cars to the old mother road, laid out a plan, and went to work: a trip down Route 66 to promote electric cars. Route 66 is the largest tourist destination in America. It’s like an amusement park ride. Good folks from all over the globe, who like me, grew up on the mythology of the American West, save up their money to rent a car in Chicago and travel the old route all the way down to the Santa Monica pier. Except the problem today is the cost of the trip in gasoline is quickly becoming too much, so we need to find a solution.

Los Angeles already has many electric car chargers around the city. What if we started bringing them up Route 66, one every 50 miles? But at the time, GM was crushing the EV1, and there was no Tesla Motors roadster in sight, just a t-Zero prototype. That didn’t stop me. I bought a Scion xB because I knew it would be ideal, a utilitarian mini-mini van. Little did I know that Tom Gage at AC Propulsion in LA would have the same idea. I’d just found the ideal way to promote it. Don’t miss our meeting in his garage at the end of the documentary I shot along the way, Toaster 66, which you can see on Google Video.

I met amazing people on my trip, folks who invested their life savings in buying Route 66 road side attractions; many of them retired nuclear industry workers. I demonstrated to them that if we could install charging stations along the old Route, we could attract electric car rental companies. Folks would be able to drive for pennies a mile, revive tourism, and start a revolution. I got everybody sold, but then came the hard part, how to muster up the resources to make the dream real. This is how I find myself in the pages of Route 66 Pulse, invited to write about the project by my friend, Jim Conkle. He and I share the same vision for the future of Route 66. Back to the Future, restore and preserve what is old and beautiful, while introducing the latest, most modern technologies. Bill Huth, the owner of the Willow Springs International Raceway north of LA, now shares our vision.

It’s a thrill being involved with such great people who are forward thinking, who see a future for the automobile that is also in tune with our history of environmental preservation in this country, who want to strike a balance between our love of the open road and our need to manage our resources. What better way of doing this is there than for Route 66 to become the first electric highway in America?

So I’m appealing to you here. I could have written a travelogue, instead I plant a seed. Let’s preserve this vast country. Westerns are making a come back, and frankly, this time, they’re never going to go away again. I’m writing one right now, to make James Coburn proud. The success of the Disney animated movie Cars is bringing a whole new generation of young people to loving the history of the old route. Let’s be ready for them when they come.

You can read more about Remy’s trip along Route 66 on his web site, TheBox66.com, and see footage he shot along the way at Toaster66.com. He can be reached at the Environmental Library Fund in Weston, CT.