Wheego Drives Away With PETA Award for Leaving Leather Out of All-Electric Cars

Automaker Saves Cows' Lives and the Environment

For Immediate Release:
April 22, 2010

Contact:
Ashley Gonzalez 757-622-7382

Atlanta -- For offering only nonleather interiors in its all-electric vehicles, Wheego Electric Cars has won a PETA Proggy Award for the Best Green Car Company of 2010. Wheego President Jeff Boyd will receive a letter of congratulations and framed certificate and will be mentioned on PETA's award-winning Web site PETA.org. PETA's Proggy Awards ("Proggy" is for "progress") recognize animal-friendly achievements in commerce and culture.

The company's decision to omit leather from all its electric vehicles will come as good news to consumers who are shopping for environmentally responsible cars, and it's even better news for cows. It can take the hides of up to 15 cows to make the interior of just one car.

On factory farms, cattle suffer third-degree burns when they are branded, and they have their tails, horns, and testicles cut off without being given any painkillers. In slaughterhouses, many cows are dismembered while they are still conscious. Turning the skin of a dead animal into finished leather requires a variety of dangerous substances, including chromium, arsenic, formaldehyde, coal-tar derivatives, and assorted oils, dyes, and finishes--some of which are cyanide-based. Tannery waste includes lime sludge, sulfides, and acids as well as animal hair and flesh.

"Just in time for Earth Day, Wheego confirmed that its vehicles are leather-free," says PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. "Besides saving fossil fuels and keeping harmful effluent out of our waterways, every Wheego car on the road will also save animals."

For more information, please visit PETA.org.