Gas Co. Joins Automotive Consortium : Transportation: Utility will push for development of natural- gas-powered vehicles in competition with electrics.

After first hitching its star to electric vehicles, Calstart--the group trying to build an advanced transportation industry in the Southland--is broadening its efforts by adding Southern California Gas Co. to its backers.

The public-private group will announce today that Gas Co. President Warren I. Mitchell will join its board and that W. Bill Miller, vice president for marketing, will be added to its executive committee.

For the Gas Co.--the nation’s biggest natural gas distributor--joining Calstart offers a leg up on public and institutional visibility as it attempts to launch natural-gas-fueled vehicles in the sometimes confusing mosaic of competing alternative fuels in California. The utility wants to establish Southern California as the world leader in development and use of natural gas vehicles.

“This provides us an opportunity to capitalize on the work Calstart is doing,” Mitchell said Tuesday. The consortium has “been effective in having access to top-level business and political leaders and certainly has better access to press coverage and publicity than does the Gas Co. standing alone,” he said.

For Calstart, the alliance marks an embrace of other alternative vehicle fuels after an early focus on electric cars and buses.

“Our true mission statement is to promote ‘advanced transportation technology,’ ” said Mike Gage, Calstart president and chief executive. “It’s a natural fit to have the natural gas folks working with the electric folks.”

Gage noted that one frequently mentioned transportation concept is the hybrid car, which might employ both electric batteries and natural-gas-powered fuel cells. Indeed, Calstart on Monday was awarded $4 million by the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, in part earmarked to support development of such hybrid vehicles.

The consortium previously has received $6 million in state and federal grants and has raised $14 million from its members, money being spent to promote its members’ alternative vehicle projects to auto makers worldwide. The latest federal money will be matched by an additional $6 million from member companies and public agencies. Mitchell said the group’s success in obtaining government funds was another draw for the Gas Co.

While public attention lately has focused on efforts to improve the electric car--a goal that remains elusive--the technology to use compressed natural gas in transportation is already practical, according to most observers of the alternative energy business.

More than 1,000 natural gas vehicles--contrasted with a few dozen electrics--now operate on Southern California highways. Mitchell, who in January will replace T. Boone Pickens as head of the national Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition, expects another 1,000 natural gas cars in Southern California by the end of 1993 and more than 250,000 by the year 2000.

Rules set by the California Air Resources Board will require 20,000 to 40,000 electric vehicles to be in the state’s new-car showrooms by 1998.

The Gas Co. so far has spent $32 million to develop natural gas refueling systems and help the big auto makers build natural-gas-powered cars and trucks. It plans to spend $50 million more through 1996, completing a total of 150 public refueling stations in Southern California.

In the long run, natural gas and electric utilities may find themselves in a high-stakes competition to power alternate-fuel vehicles. But at the moment, they can afford to cooperate, Gage said.