New Electric Cars Generate a Lot of Input

Regretfully, the articles on electric vehicles did not address what I believe are the real issues, which include:

1. Electric vehicles (EVs) are as different from today’s gas-engined cars as the horse and buggy was from the 1897 Benz car. They can never be both fast and have range, so it was perhaps inappropriate for the fine writer and performance maven Paul Dean to test one.

2. If EVs don’t work with today’s batteries, they probably won’t work with tomorrow’s either. Liquid fuel has about 130 times the energy density of the best lead-acid batteries. The consensus is that after spending billions, we will in five to 12 years have commercial batteries with only around a 60:1 disadvantage. The fundamentals are little different, and there is no confirmation that the new batteries will be as cheap, safe, reliable and long lasting as lead-acids.

3. There is little future in California for the all-electric vehicle, other than for special applications. No EVs now envisaged can go up the Grapevine pass and have anything left, if they ever make it to the top. Hybrids are the answer, yet government agencies are virtually ignoring these and drafting regulations (and) concessions for the all-electric vehicle.

4. Regulators and the utility companies are doing the fandango with big business, which has soaked up millions of local and federal government money (yours) plus big utility company largess (yours, too). Small EV companies haven’t seen a dime. Soon the big companies will drop the ball. Ford is lobbying for reduction and deferment of clean air standards; the Financial Times (recently reported that) GM is going soft on the Impact. (We have been very visibly working on our hybrid truck conversion for 10 months and have received not one inquiry phone call or letter from a regulator or utility person.)

5. Commercial vehicles cause perhaps half the urban mobile source pollution. . . . Because they generally have more predictable use cycles than personal transportation, we should make a big effort on commercial EVs, which have so far been almost ignored by regulators and subsidy-givers.

We were surprised that there was no mention of our company in your stories. We are planning low-volume production of hybrid-electric (pickups) and other commercial vehicles.

Perhaps one day your fine paper will do an in-depth analysis of commercial and technical issues affecting electric vehicles.

MITJA V. HINDERKS

President

California Alternate Propulsion Co.

Los Angeles