Region Has Long Way to Go to Reach Electric Car Goal : Pollution: Tax incentives and education are needed to meet even drastically reduced expectations, survey finds.

It will take substantial government incentives and public education, in addition to technological advancements, for regional clean-air authorities to reach their goal of more than 1 million electric cars on the road by 2010, according to a soon-to-be released University of California study.

To meet a federal deadline for cutting smog, the South Coast Air Quality Management District is counting on 17% of cars being powered by electricity in 18 years. The projection, which translates into about 1.3 million cars, is drastically scaled back from the agency’s original 1989 vision of all cars being electrical by then.

If the 17% goal is not reached, a similar amount of pollution--more than 15,000 tons per year of smog-forming compounds--would have to be eliminated some other way in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

The goal is realistic, but only if a highly visible, multi-pronged campaign is launched, said Daniel Sperling, director of the Institute for Transportation Studies at UC Davis. His suggestions include more state tax breaks to reduce the higher costs of electric cars, preferential parking offered by local governments and government or utility subsidies of home recharging stations.

Such measures will be needed to offset not only the cost of the cars but other disadvantages, such as their short range between rechargings, their small size and various mechanical glitches.

Major auto companies have been working on electric cars that they expect to market by the mid-1990s. Cars that have been converted from gasoline to electric power are available from several firms, but fewer than 1,000 are on the road.

The state recently began offering a sales tax exemption and a $1,000 state income tax credit for converted electric cars sold by two Northern California companies. Those incentives are not enough to promote widespread purchases of new electric cars once they become available, said Tom Turrentine, a graduate student who worked on Sperling’s project. Some other proposals have failed in recent years; a number of others are under discussion in the Legislature.

Researchers spent a year gauging consumer attitudes. They used a 236-person test drive over four days at the Rose Bowl, follow-up focus group discussions and driving diaries.

They also examined government policies on cars using compressed natural gas cars in New Zealand and Canada. They found that consumers responded to government incentives, but once those were withdrawn, “they bailed out,” Turrentine said. “It really takes confidence that there’s a partnership.”

The study, conducted for the California Institute of Energy Efficiency, is scheduled for public release later this month. Sperling hopes to design a detailed marketing plan for electric cars after another two years’ work.

He has concluded that electric cars are the Los Angeles region’s best hope to combat the 60% of smog that is formed by vehicle emissions.

In the Rose Bowl survey, held on four days in June, participants favored driving an alternative-fuel car (57.4%) by a wide margin over car-pooling (17.1%), and by an even wider margin over mass transit (15.7%).

That may not be surprising, in light of the AQMD’s expressed dissatisfaction with the progress so far of its commuter program, which requires employers to encourage their work forces to car-pool, take the bus, walk, bicycle or work from home to help fight smog. The pace of change has been slower than regulators had hoped.

Of the various alternative power sources, such as methanol, compressed natural gas and reformulated gasoline, Sperling said, electricity is by far the cleanest, even taking into account the pollutants generated by power plants.

But it is going to take a lot of effort to get the cars out of showrooms and onto the streets even in the lower numbers the AQMD expects, he added. The AQMD’s all-electric projection, part of the agency’s 1989 clean-air plan, was revised downward last year after skeptical state officials complained that the estimate was much too optimistic.

The state Air Resources Board has mandated that 5% of the new cars sold in California--about 40,000 vehicles--must be electric in 1998, and 10%, or 200,000, of new cars sold in the year 2003 will have to be electric. Those numbers fall far short of the AQMD plans.

“Auto makers are being told to sell them, but if government doesn’t move to help, no one’s going to buy them,” Sperling said.

“In Los Angeles,” he wrote in the study, “it could be a litmus test of community spirit.”

The researchers decided that the most likely electric car buyers are homeowners, since few renters or landlords can be expected to invest $100 to $900 for recharging facilities. The homeowners would need a garage or carport for secure overnight charging and probably would need to own more than one vehicle, since an electric car would best complement rather than replace a longer-range gasoline-powered car.

At least one person in the household should drive less than 70 miles--the range for the electric car--for a round-trip commute. The report also said that households with an income of less than $50,000 would be unlikely to buy an electric car. One company sells a converted Ford Escort for $17,400, about twice the cost of its gasoline-powered counterpart, and another sells converted Toyotas, Hondas and Mazdas for $10,000 to $16,000.

The potential pool of customers shrinks further because only some drivers are willing to accept less power, less luggage space and other constraints. “Estimates of around 1% (of the market) are probably reliable if one were to market electric vehicles now,” Sperling wrote.

Predictability in driving patterns seems to be the key, he said. For example, he found that test drive participants in the 45 to 54 age group were the most likely to choose electric vehicles, as opposed to methanol or compressed-natural-gas cars.

Interestingly, environmental activists who participated in Sperling’s test drive were among the least likely to select an electric car. Turrentine, who moderated a focus group of 21 “clean-air enthusiasts” said they explained they had erratic meeting schedules that take them to all parts of the Los Angeles Basin. Methanol and compressed-natural-gas cars have longer ranges.

The environmentalists also cited their relatively low incomes as an obstacle to buying an electric car.

In a survey of the Rose Bowl drivers, 71% said state tax credits would help them move from interest to a commitment to buy an electric car. Another 26% said the best way to encourage electric car sales would be to tax vehicles and fuels according to how much they pollute. Only 3% suggested no state action.

The survey and focus groups, Sperling said, also suggested that education will play a key role in developing a market. For example, before the test drive, many participants had thought electric cars were still prototypes and most did not expect the cars to perform as well as they did.

The issue of limited range was put to rest among a group who were asked to keep driving diaries for a week. Sperling said participants were surprised by how few miles they actually covered each day.

Objections to the electric cars that were driven included complaints about acceleration, braking and the subcompact size.

Legislators and air-quality regulators agreed with Sperling’s conclusion that incentives and education are needed, but differed over what should be done and who should do it.

In the next few weeks, Assemblyman Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) plans to introduce a bill asking the state Department of Commerce to explore the best ways to encourage consumers and businesses to buy electric cars, and another requiring the state Public Utilities Commission and the Department of Energy to come up with a master plan for installing recharging facilities in public places.

He said Sperling’s study has persuaded him to add a provision to another bill that the AQMD develop a program for educational awareness.

Los Angeles City Councilman Marvin Braude, an AQMD board member, said he expects to introduce a city preferential-parking measure and another requiring large parking lots to install charging facilities.

But AQMD Chairman Henry W. Wedaa, a Yorba Linda council member, said he did not think local governments should involve themselves. “I think it’s a job for private enterprise,” he said.