Quest for a Local Electric-Car Industry to Begin : Autos: A public-private consortium that wants to develop a Southern California manufacturing base opens its headquarters today.
A bid to make California a world center for electric-vehicle manufacturing formally begins today when Calstart, a broad-based coalition of public agencies and private businesses, sets up headquarters in the Burbank complex where the Stealth fighter was built.
The group has already raised $14 million toward seven development projects the next six years, including production of a prototype electric car to be shopped to potential buyers around the world.
Also to be announced this morning will be Calstart’s board of directors, who will include transportation, business and political leaders, one of the state’s best-known environmentalists and even the former head of the Pentagon’s Strategic Defense Initiative, better known as Star Wars.
“This has really come a long ways fast,” Southern California Edison President Michael Peevey said. Peevey, who has long supported development of electric vehicles on regional and national policy organizations, is chairman of the Calstart board.
“There’s going to be at least one of these centers” in the world, Peevey said, “so why not here?”
To curb air pollution, California is requiring auto makers to sell 40,000 emission-free vehicles in the state annually as of 1998 and 200,000 such vehicles--almost certain to be electric--by the year 2003.
“We are the center of the first major usage of electric vehicles,” Peevey said, “so we can have an environmental win, an economic win and a technology win altogether . . . We’re playing for world preeminence in this area.”
Calstart is a 41-member consortium of five major utilities, including Southern California Edison Co. and San Diego Gas & Electric Co.; large and small aerospace and high-tech companies, including Fairchild Manufacturing, General Motors Corp., Hughes Aircraft Co., Lockheed Corp. and Pirelli Armstrong Tire Corp.; plus educational and research institutions that include UCLA, UC-Davis, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Palo Alto-based Electric Power Research Institute.
What began with casual discussions among electric-vehicle supporters in Los Angeles only months ago will now be directed by a board that includes James A. Abrahamson, executive vice president of Hughes Aircraft and the former Air Force general in charge of the Strategic Defense Initiative; Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, who is also chair of the L.A. County Transportation Commission; Jack E. Thomas, president of San Diego Gas & Electric Co.; Mary Nichols, Los Angeles director of the Natural Resources Defense Council; James Quillin, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Conference of Machinists; Dr. Richard P. Caren, vice president of science and engineering at Lockheed Corp.; and Dr. Lon E. Bell, president of Amerigon Inc., a small Irwindale manufacturer of electric vehicle parts, who was instrumental in the group’s formation.
Lockheed, which has donated two rent-free years at the 155,000-square-foot Burbank office building, is among the Southern California aerospace and defense companies hoping to replace some of the business lost to Defense Department cutbacks by meeting expected higher demand for electric transportation.
Calstart has met a May 27 deadline to apply for up to $4 million in matching federal funds under an amendment to a transportation law that went into effect last December. The group’s goal is to raise $20 million to launch its development programs, which include:
* Building a prototype advanced electric vehicle for a worldwide marketing effort.
* Developing advanced electric bus propulsion systems.
* Building a short-journey “neighborhood” electric-car prototype.
* Setting up a network of service facilities and recharging stations for electric vehicles.
* Setting up an electric vehicle testing program.
* Providing seed money and work space to research programs at California universities and research centers.
* Funding small California businesses that need additional capital to develop and commercialize advanced transportation technologies.
Calstart officials point to Japanese government plans to put 200,000 electric vehicles in use by the year 2000. Global demand then could be 850,000 vehicles annually, they said.
Rep. Howard Berman (D-Panorama City), author of the federal funding amendment, has said that if California could produce 300,000 of those vehicles, it would mean as many as 55,000 jobs and $2.2 billion in income.
“What you have is a unique opportunity for a successful public-private partnership,” Peevey said, “something this nation’s foreign competitors have historically been much better at than we have.”
