A Pioneer Plugs Into the Future With Electric Car : Environment: Caltrans official converts gasoline-powered ‘junker’ into a virtually non-polluting station wagon.
My, how times and styles have changed for Gary Klein.
Once, he thundered around town in a flashy ’49 Ford. Metallic green. Lowered. Duel exhaust pipes that rumbled and fired like Judgment Day. He was 16.
Now, Klein is a middle-aged, seasoned and sensible bureaucrat for Caltrans in San Diego who wears short-sleeve shirts and has a pocket full of pens.
These days his commute-to-work car is a hopelessly tame 1981 Ford Escort station wagon. Bunny white. Hates most hills. Runs as quiet as a coroner’s office.
What’s gotten into Klein?
Electricity.
Klein has become convinced that the most effective way to seriously reduce smog is by casting off traditional combustion engine vehicles and going wholesale to electric cars. Like his.
“I don’t consider myself a hard-core environmentalist, but I feel I’m doing something to clean up the air,” said Klein, who oversees a number of local highway projects for the state transportation agency.
For 25 years, he had this current going through his head about electric cars, and finally last year he bought converter parts, acquired a “junker” Ford Escort with a blown engine, and, after putting in 250 hours of labor, last November came up with the future.
Klein’s car is powered by 18 six-volt batteries that run a traction motor and produce about 100 horsepower, enough to get up 65 m.p.h. worth of speed for Klein’s daily round-trip trek from his El Cajon home to Caltrans in San Diego’s Old Town.
Call his electric car a wimp in the heartland of testosterone-driven ‘Vettes and Trans Ams, but the vehicle is roadworthy, powerful enough, and rides with stealth-like silence (except for a few old body rattles) that surrounds Klein with serenity while he drives.
“I love it. It’s a different sensation,” he said.
And, like it or not, it won’t be long before many thousands of motorists join him.
The latest figures from the state Department of Motor Vehicles show a mere 3,095 registered electric automobiles in California. It’s unknown how many exist in San Diego County, but the number is believed to be well below 100--contrasted with about 1.4 million conventional passenger vehicles in the county.
However, the state Air Resources Board’s anti-smog standards, the strictest in the United States, have decreed that in 1998, 2% of all new cars sold in California must be electric-powered. By 2003, the figure would reach 10%, or an estimated 100,000 electric autos a year.
“Over its road life, an electric car can be 100% less polluting than a gas car,” said air board spokesman Bill Sessa. “Every major (automobile) manufacturer has electric prototypes.”
While Klein is a pioneer, he is also an unabashed booster of electric cars, which he is convinced will be the salvation of the air. He will tell any gathering or individual about how he turned a sad heap into a one-man environmental statement.
It’s not that he doesn’t believe in mass transit such as the commuter rail planned for San Diego County, or in encouraging workers to ride-share to their jobs.
It’s just that, as a transportation professional, he knows how people stubbornly resist giving up the old ways, especially when it comes to California’s legendary love affair with the car.
“Changing people’s driving habits in Southern California is an extremely hard thing to do,” Klein said. “The only answer is technology.”
He had studied electric cars for 25 years before deciding the time had arrived to set an example.
“A lot of people call themselves environmentalists and cry out about cleaning up the air and preserving wetlands or endangered species,” he said. “That’s fine as long as somebody else is spending the money.”
Although it’s possible to buy a complete electric car outright, he opted to purchase the vital organs from a company in Santa Rosa and convert the Ford Escort he acquired for his automotive Frankenstein experiment.
He removed, among other things, the engine, radiator, pipes, gas tank and catalytic converter from the little station wagon. By the time he had finished the conversion, the entire project had cost $9,000--including $500 to buy the junker and give it a fresh paint job.
Although a car can be a distracting mistress, Klein’s wife of 32 years, Barbara, supported the electric car idea. “She agreed that, if an energy crisis ever came again, we needed to do something,” Klein said.
His only nagging doubt about the creation was whether it would storm up the steep hill near his house. It took the hill well enough (although not exactly by storm), and Klein concedes that, generally, electric cars “don’t like hills.”
Although he praises his vehicle, he acknowledges that electric cars aren’t for everybody.
On the positive side, the Ford is quiet, smooth, never needs a gas station, can go 65 m.p.h. (the upper speed he designed it for), and has a 40-mile to 70-mile range--depending on speed and hills--before it needs a battery recharge. It doesn’t overheat because there is no radiator.
The car’s capabilities are perfect for Klein, who drives only 15 miles to work, where he plugs the car’s battery charger into a handy 110-volt outlet to keep it charged up. If the car was completely run down, it would take eight or nine hours to recharge.
It needs no smog devices or standard maintenance. “The only thing I have to do: Once every three months, I check the water in the batteries. Period,” Klein said.
And, of course, there’s another significant advantage: His car is about 98% less polluting than a combustion-engine vehicle. “You’re saving the environment,” he said.
Still, Klein never claimed electric cars are ideal for everybody.
The limited travel range before recharging might not please some drivers. “This is a commuter car, something to go to work and the store. It isn’t going to take you on a trip to L.A. or across country,” said Klein, who also drives a conventional pickup truck.
Also, his 18 six-volt batteries must be replaced every three years, a $1,300 expense.
However, on balance, Klein argues that the cost of occasional battery replacement and electricity for recharging is about equal to continually buying gasoline for a conventional car. The big savings, he said, is in the almost non-maintenance needed for an electric auto.
Klein isn’t shy about his car, even going so far as to put a sign on the back: “ELECTRIC VEHICLE.” “When people see me driving 65 (m.p.h.) down the freeway and see that sign, they’ll think maybe electric cars aren’t that bad.”
After eight months behind the wheel, “I keep thinking the novelty will wear off, but it doesn’t. I enjoy going to work in the morning,” he said.
However, he wishes he could afford to add a sporty electric car to his fleet of vehicles. The ghost of his souped up ’49 Ford has not left his memory.
