Carolyn Coquillette

Can you tell us a little bit about your shop?

The interior of the shop is clearly a little bit different than your usual shop. We like to believe that coming here is as restorative for you as it is for your car. We developed our own software that allows us to do all of our work orders online, because we felt really strongly about coming up with a way that you wouldn't have to print out the work order.

Your garage seems like the exact opposite of most garages—clean, friendly, helpful—what motivated you to work on hybrids?

There are a lot of people trying to improve the image of auto repair shops—it's not just renegade women technicians. So it's not the exact opposite of most. Hybrids are typically low-emission vehicles, so we're lucky that we don't have a lot of emissions to deal with. We use the plants around the shop to actually digest the additional vapors that are remaining. It's strange, because you would think that auto repair, like restaurants or any industry that's a service industry trying to attract customers, would think about what the customer sees. Auto repair has been largely unaware, unhealthy and unconscious of their appearance. I would be lying to you if I didn't think we were legitimately trying to set ourselves apart from the rest of the industry, and part of that has to do with being a 'luscious' garage. My personal interest is hybrids. I wanted to have a daily diet of hybrids. I didn't want to work on other types of cars.

Are there any quick fixes or checkups that a hybrid owner can do themselves?

You can change your own oil. Keep stock tires on the car: People put cheap tires on and then they complain that the mileage is dropping.

The business itself seems like a hybrid, as you have art shows here.

Yes, we have rotating art shows—it adds some color to the shop. It's also a testament to how clean we are, that we're not concerned about damaging artwork or leaving residue on it or anything. We actually have a lift that we've previously used as a stage, so we've had performances inside the shop, sort of a community effort. It's part of this idea that green isn't just buying recycled toilet paper or driving a hybrid, it's participating in your local community.

Is working on hybrids more dangerous than working on a normal car, or is that just a rumor?

It's dangerous, you can get hurt. There is some hype to it, because clearly people service power lines, and those are a heck of a lot more dangerous. There are aspects of the car that are totally normal, that are status quo, and then there are aspects of the car that involve the hybrid portion, and sometimes it can be very hard to separate where one part stops and the other begins, and then sometimes they're just involved together. If you understand a regular car, and you don't really understand how the hybrid works, it's unlikely that you'll be able to tell when you've crossed over that threshold. That's when you can get into trouble. So there is more danger, but I think it's not so much about the danger as much as it is about new technology, and having to understand how those concepts apply and manifest in the car.

Have you always been into cars?

The seed was planted when the brother of a person I was dating was a mechanic. I think I was romanticizing the trade, this idea of having a skill that you contain within your own self. In college I studied English and physics. With physics, you would think you might gain knowledge about how a car works, because a car is rolling applied physics, basically. Well, lo and behold, I discovered that I knew nothing about my car. I was completely ignorant of how my car worked; this concept of engineering was totally lost on me. So I signed up for night classes at my local community college. One of my instructors was looking for a porter, which is like a shop peon, and I decided to take the job, and I discovered that I really like the shop atmosphere. At the shop, you would see a car come in, it would have a problem, a person would fix it, the car would leave, and the customer would be happy.

What do you drive?

We have a shop car, a 2007 Toyota Prius, which is a great car, and it's newly plug-in, which means that most of my driving in town can be done without using gas, but you can probably tell that I'm not entirely pleased to be driving at all. When I was living in Oakland, I sold my car, I started biking to my writing studio, and biking to work. People thought it was ridiculous that I was biking to fix cars. I was basically able to be car-free for about two and a half years, and then we decided to open this business and it became clear that we really ought to buy a hybrid.

Is the plug-in conversion process what you want to be the mainstay of your garage?

No. We're already in a niche, and thats even more of a niche of a niche. Honestly, the conversions are just temporary, we're just doing it to politically motivate automakers to build them themselves, and when they do, they'll be a heck of a lot better than anything that we come up with. But, in the meantime, for those die-hard drivers who really, really want to plug their cars in, we're going to make them happy. It's available, the technology is here, it's totally doable, why shouldn't we do it?

When was your eco-awakening?

I was an 'environmentalist' when I was in college, because I was all, 'Oh no, global warming! I love the whales! Etc.' and I still loved to drive my car, and I did a lot of irresponsible things when I first started wrenching. I bought this enormous truck—I called it my break-up truck—it had straight exhaust, no catalysts, and it was leaking oil. The valve stems were leaking so when you let it sit it would leak oil into the combustion chamber, so when you started it up, you would get these huge billowing clouds of blue smoke, and I thought that was so funny. I was completely unable to make the connection between that and my love of trees. Obviously, I've come around. I am awake now.

What was the most memorable eco-challenge with the garage, and how was it resolved?

What was difficult was when I hired our first technician. I needed help and it took me a long time to find someone, and he seemingly knew a lot about cars and was capable of servicing hybrids, and he had a lot of experience, but he did not see the environment as a priority at all. He drove a Prius and lived in Berkeley, but he just could not see aerosols in the shop as being a problem. It's hard to find staff who fully get what we're doing here.

What is one recent green obsession that you just can't live without?

I'm pretty psyched because we finally found someone to take away all the things that can't go in the city recycling bin. There's a lot of stuff we generate that can't go in the recycling bin, like rubber wiper blades, and I refused to throw them out because I knew they were recyclable, it was just a matter of who was going to do the recycling. So we just found Eco Haul, this green hauling company, and their mission is to take away as much as possible from the landfill. They come by once a month and pick up all the stuff in these white bins and take it away. Now everything is being recycled.

Obviously, hybrids are a big step forward for cutting back on emissions, but would you rather see them replaced by fully electric vehicles? Or would that just put you out of a job?

I'm not worried about it. There's a bunch of new stuff that has come out after the most recent Detroit Auto Show, about how all these other automakers are coming to the table with green transportation, and a lot are not hybrids, and that's fine. There are a lot of ways to reduce. One thing to do is make smaller cars—that's a very easy way to make them lighter so they won't use as much gas. The truth is that hybrid technology makes all cars more efficient, whether they run on bio-diesel or gas. But even if hybrids were to disappear, and we were only riding our bicycles, we would adapt.

What would you say to someone who might not be able to afford a new hybrid, but still wants to drive as greenly as possible?

The first thing to do is to drive less. You can burn far less gas than hybrids do, simply by driving your car less. Take all the crap out of your trunk; don't carry extra weight. Keep your tires inflated. Keep your car in tune. There's actually a book, called The Planet Mechanic's Guide To Environmental Car Care. It was published in '93, clearly before hybrids, so there's a lot of things to do to reduce. It's radical stuff.

Are there any auto-industry secrets to saving gas?

Rolling down your window consumes as much energy as running your air conditioning, because it disturbs the resistance of your car—I buy that. When you're barreling down the highway with your hand out the window, just close the window and use the AC. More auto-industry secrets… I love those old Toyota pickups, now the Toyota pickups are so much bigger! And the new Highlander Hybrid is like a tank. It's about not being an idiot when you go to buy a car: People want to believe that it tastes good and it's fat-free.

What green thing do you do that sometimes feels absurd?

The plug-in hybrid thing. With the Prius, the way that it works is you have to trick the Prius into staying in electric mode. You can command electric mode in cars that are available in Japan and Europe, not in the US, but the software is there—you just put in a button, put in a circuit, and it works. But there are all sorts of things that can turn it off. One of the things is defrost, so in order to keep the gas engine off, I drive around without using my defroster. At some point you can't really see. So, that's ridiculous.

Do you have any eco-sins—a guilty pleasure or enjoyable indulgence that isn't green but you must have in your life?

Oh! I'm not a vegetarian, I should be one and I'm just not. Meat is just a terrible energy consumer, so I'm trying not to select meat, but I eat a lot of bacon. I love bacon. Bacon and cheese.