To Cleaner Air and Good New Jobs, Please, and Step On It

Encouraging things are happening in the growing effort to produce an electric car.

To begin with, the enthusiasm for non-polluting electric vehicles is resulting in the first truly serious effort in 70 years to change the internal combustion engine.

In the process, a new industry could emerge--notably in California--based on electronics and knowledge gained in aerospace work.

Already the effort has demonstrated a reassuring new model for industrial development in which government, big business and entrepreneurial companies work together.

Briefly, what’s happening is that General Motors is building an entirely new electric car, from a speedy, stylish design contributed by AeroVironment, a small Monrovia company. Ford and Chrysler are working on electric vans.

All three auto makers are in a $260-million joint effort with the Department of Energy to support research on a new car battery that can power a vehicle 200 miles without recharging--half to two-thirds the distance that a gas tank takes a car without refilling.

Meanwhile, more than 20 small companies are working with Lockheed, Southern California Edison and state and local government agencies in a consortium called Calstart to develop components and processes for electric vehicles.

The aim is to produce cars able to meet the California Air Resources Board’s demand that 2% of the cars sold in 1998 produce zero emissions. Nine Eastern states and the District of Columbia have adopted California’s tough standards, other states may do so. The mandate for electric cars is growing.

Still, progress will be slow. The most optimistic projections foresee 300,000 electric cars sold nationwide in 2003--roughly 2% of the 15 million cars and trucks sold annually. And questions remain about price and performance. Initial models may cost more than $20,000, need government tax incentives and go only 100 miles before needing recharging.

Safety questions will arise--over high-voltage batteries under the hood--as will opposition from oil companies, not eager to see rivals for gasoline.

Even experts have doubts. Paul MacCready, chairman of AeroVironment, questioned last week whether the electric car would end up a curiosity or the start of something big. “The question is whether we’re circling a minnow or a school of tuna,” he told scientists at Caltech.

The answer is and should be “tuna,” because it’s not a casual matter. The United States needs to develop electric cars and other advanced vehicles for competitive and technological as well as environmental reasons. It needs to nurture the base of a new industry.

Lon Bell, president of Amerigon Inc.--a leader of the Calstart consortium--notes that California has 400 aerospace-defense companies working on technology that could be adapted to advanced transportation.

The aim of putting them to work on cars is to achieve critical mass for innovation--a variety of efforts to produce original solutions. Hybrid engines, powered by both gasoline and electricity, will be tried. Other forms such as fuel cells powered by hydrogen may emerge as the long-term power source for cars. Mazda recently demonstrated a car run on hydrogen gas.

Yes, there is international competition. Global markets await the developer of non-polluting transportation. The Japanese government has a program to produce 100,000 electric cars by the year 2000.

But Americans are ahead in this race, say experts. And if they are to stay ahead, we should understand why the race is necessary.

Simply put, it’s time to retool the wasteful internal combustion engine, which MacCready--a Caltech Ph.D.--calls a blast furnace on wheels. He notes that it wastes 85% of the energy in gasoline through heat carried out in the exhaust, or through the radiator or in braking or in friction with the road and the air. Only 15% of the energy in a gallon of gas moves the vehicle.

MacCready’s initial electric car for GM would reduce friction by 80% and drive the wheels more efficiently through induction motors. Rather than waste heat in braking, it would use the slowing and quickening of the wheels as generators to replenish electricity.

Environmentally, electric cars create only 20% of the pollution of gasoline powered automobiles, because their source of power--the utility generating plant--is more efficient and tightly controlled than thousands of engines on highways.

And recharging typically during nighttime or other off-peak hours--in home garages or special service stations--the cars would bring efficiencies to utility plants as well.

By itself the electric car--really an improved commuting vehicle--is not a breakthrough. But its development to date sets a good example of how government and industry can work together.

The California Air Resources Board knew what it wanted two years ago, when it declared that cars gradually would have to cease polluting. “We wanted to push electric technology,” says William Sessa, a board spokesman.

Some are critical of such government moves. “Wouldn’t it be better to let ideas percolate through the marketplace?” asks the chief executive of an oil company.

The blunt answer is that in some marketplaces, like cars and oil, ideas don’t always percolate. Over at least 70 years, the car industry did not basically change the internal combustion engine, despite inherent inefficiency and air pollution. And it took government mandates to get the lead out of gasoline.

This time though, industry’s response was not to oppose the electric mandate but to get to work. As a result U.S. industry leads the global race to improve transportation.

At a time when Americans, and especially Californians, are questioning their ability to work together, that’s highly reassuring.