All-Electric Auto Showroom to Open : Environment: Green Motor Works will be a pioneer in the Southland. It will sell converted gasoline cars.

From the outside, William Meurer’s business looks much like any other auto shop on Vineland Avenue in North Hollywood.

But there’s nothing ordinary about the cars and mopeds inside the soon-to-be-completed dealership. Called Green Motor Works Inc., Meurer’s shop will be Southern California’s first dealership selling only electric cars, according to people who follow the fledgling industry.

Another North Hollywood firm, Electric Car Co. of America, has custom-converted about 26 gas cars to electric in its garage, but it doesn’t sell them in a showroom to the general public as Meurer plans to do.

Meurer’s dealership is scheduled to open next week, but already he has sold a car to actor Leslie Nielsen (the harebrained Frank Drebin of “Naked Gun” fame). Nielsen will pick up a non-polluting 1985 Pontiac Fiero with 18 batteries and a solar deck for extra electricity (sticker price: $22,500). The actor apparently got the idea from a similar car featured in his latest movie, “Naked Gun 2 1/2,” which has an environmental theme, Meurer said.

Also in stock are a converted 1986 Ford Escort ($17,850) and, for the budget-conscious, a 1984 Dodge Omni priced at $9,950. The dealership is also offering a battery-driven moped, called Eco-Scoot, for $1,995.

But battery-powered vehicles have a number of well-known drawbacks, including limited driving range--recharging is required every 40 to 60 miles--the high initial cost of conversion, and slow acceleration (the converted Escort takes 29 seconds to go from zero to 60 m.p.h. compared to 11 seconds for a gasoline Escort). With prices around double the cost of new vehicles of the same type with internal combustion engines, these cars aren’t for everyone, Meurer concedes.

However, Meurer isn’t expecting to become the Cal Worthington of the electric car business.

“I’m not a car salesman, and I don’t want to be a car salesman,” said Meurer, 35, of Toluca Lake. “I just want to make these cars available because the environmental benefits are so great.”

Most of the big U.S. and foreign auto makers have developed electric car prototypes in anticipation of strict air pollution standards that will take effect in California in 1998. While the big auto makers have yet to solve problems of relatively low range and slow acceleration, the alternative car industry consists of small companies like Green Motor Works that have sprung up to fill the void with cars converted from gasoline to electric power.

Meurer said he has long wanted to use his business skills to promote an environmentally friendly product, but he didn’t have the necessary capital. Finally last fall, he used his savings from a successful film-lighting business and invested more than $250,000 to buy the North Hollywood property. He turned the former auto repair shop into a showroom with an adjacent garage for converting cars from gas to electric. The shop has five employees, including sales manager Richard Houser and a full-time conversion technician, James Lunceford.

Meurer “is one of those people that realizes that every gallon of gas you burn, you’re producing 20 pounds of pollutants,” said Gary Starr, chief executive of Solar Electric Engineering Inc. in Santa Rosa, which will supply under contract the cars and parts sold by Green Motor Works. Solar Electric, the nation’s largest supplier of electric cars, also sells cars at its Santa Rosa store.

“If you’re serious about cleaning the environment, the single best thing you can do is get an electric car,” Starr said.

Starr buys used cars, usually Fieros and Escorts, rips out the engines, gas tanks and just about every other standard engine component and installs 18 lead-acid golf cart batteries and an electric motor in each. Meurer either buys the converted vehicles and resells them--for a slight profit, he hopes--or he converts used cars himself using Solar Electric parts. He prefers the latter method because it’s more profitable.

Meurer said he expects sales to be slow at first, but he hopes to sell enough cars to post a profit by the end of the year. Eventually, he expects to convert as many as 50 cars a year and buy hundreds of converted cars from Solar Electric.

The bulk of sales initially is expected to come from fleet buyers such as cities and corporations, Meurer said. Already the city of Vernon has bought six battery-powered vehicles from Solar Electric, and Santa Monica is also considering adding electric cars to its fleet.

“My goal is to open up and sell enough cars to break even and as the technology improves, when we get a big breakthrough, we will be in business,” he said.

Meanwhile, electric car customers have to make some sacrifices. After 60 miles of driving, they must recharge a car overnight by plugging it into any conventional outlet--drivers of Meurer’s cars can pull a cord out of the gas tank through the filler cap and hook it up to the nearest outlet.

And air conditioning, while available on some electric-powered models, cuts back substantially on a car’s range--some of Meurer’s cars come equipped with a small dashboard-mounted fan--and without hot-running gas engines, heating is almost impossible, Meurer said.

“Electric cars are not a good cold-weather vehicle,” he said.

On the flip side, electric cars have far fewer moving parts that can break down. And electric cars sold in California qualify for a $1,000 tax credit under a California Air Resources Board program to encourage electric car use. As converted electric vehicles, they are also exempt from state sales tax.

Eventually, Meurer will face the problem of competition from the big U.S. and foreign auto makers that must offer electric cars in California by 1998 to meet tough air pollution standards. Already, Nissan and BMW have unveiled prototypes for battery-powered cars and General Motors plans to introduce what is expected to be the first mass-produced electric vehicle in mid-decade. Called the Impact, the car is expected to reach 60 m.p.h. in eight seconds, according to GM.

Meurer first became interested in environmental issues as a student at Washington University in St. Louis, where one of his professors was environmentalist Barry Commoner. Then two years ago he started reading up on the environmental effects of pollution and he met Roger E. Billings, who heads hydrogen research at the American Academy of Science, which was founded seven years ago to promote the use of environmentally safe technologies in industry.

Meurer believes that battery-powered cars are just a steppingstone to hydrogen-powered cars like the ones being tested by Billings. Such cars, Billings says, have a range and cost comparable to those of internal combustion vehicles and produce no pollution. They are powered by combining hydrogen and oxygen to generate electricity. But the technology won’t be widely available until a safe way is found to store the highly flammable hydrogen gas, Meurer said.

In the meantime, Meurer said the handful of electric-car companies need to band together to gain market acceptance.

“Everybody has to work together on this,” Meurer said. “We’re not General Motors. We need their inspiration.”