Neil Young is rockin' in the gasoline-free world: He's converting a 1959 Lincoln Continental Mark IV, all 5,200 pounds of it, into an electric car that he plans to drive from California to Detroit (his hometown), filming as he goes, to show off the capabilities of electric cars. "It's totally positive," Young tells the New York Times. Meaning, apparently, the car and the filming, not just the battery terminal. This venture coincides with the release of Young's album Chrome Dreams II (a follow-up to the unreleased Chrome Dreams of 1977).

Can an electric car go from California to Motown on battery power? Called the Linc-Volt, this 1959 or 1960 Mark IV (reports vary) will have a biodiesel engine for backup. That's a useful feature since batteries on hybrids weighing half as much as this Lincoln are good for 2 to 40 miles, leaving the Linc-Volt 2,400 miles short of Detroit. The original hotrod Lincoln had a 430-cubic-inch (7.0-liter) V8 engine that averaged about 5 mpg and had zero emissions controls, other then the lungs of the motorists riding directly behind. A gasoline-powered trip to Detroit would suck down 500 gallons or $1,500 of gas, versus, say, $299 to fly on Southwest.

Or the range could come from the 61-year-old Young's special grasp of the physics of 2.6-ton objects. "The car is really heavy," Young told the Times. ""It's got a lot of inertia. So that gives it more power."