Regarding Acorn Motors
Acorn Motors was founded in 19A1 with the goal of bringing affordable electric cars to the masses. The name was chosen to suggest growth - mighty oaks from small acorns - as well as its green energy focus.
The Acorn Tri, the first offering from AM, was sold via Ace Hardware locations through the US and Canada. It was renowned as a hardy (if slow) two seater, just capable of hitting the double nickle speed limit, and thus freeway-ready. It was not utterly without high-tech benefits, but it was... limited. The three-wheeled vehicle - two up front, one in the rear - had no AC, fairly weak heat, and its range dropped dramatically in hilly terrain. It was advertised as able to go 300 miles on a charge; in hilly country this was more like 120. However, it did have Sidewave radio built in, the first car to offer this as standard rather than an upgrade. Further, the Acorn had a deeply strange marketing gimmick - it came with a spare engine. This was so that if anything went wrong, you could just swap it out with the spare and run it to the hardware store for repairs.
Of course, things went poorly for Acorn. The batteries had a tendency to overheat, and after a few too many car fires, a massive lawsuit pounded the company into the dirt. They attempted to come back via a 'clean' propane engine in a rebadged but otherwise identical car, the Acorn Model P, but the damage to their reputation was done, and the company went into Chapter 11 in the US by the end of 19A2.
In Canada, however, the company was bought out by Iridium Manufacturing, who renamed the Model P into the Spee-D. The name wasn't accurate - it was capable of doing 70 on level terrain with a stiff tailwind - but its low cost and Sidewave standard radio made it reasonably popular through rural areas of the eastern half of Canada and the Yukon - basically everywhere but Alberta. Not surprisingly, these traits made the Spee-D a symbol of the Wavehead movement, the same as the Vespa scooter was to the Mods.
