State Is Driving Force Behind Emission-Free Cars : Technology: Despite drawbacks, practical applications and program incentives could generate thousands of jobs.
It’s 90 degrees and smoggy in Glendora, ozone capital of the nation, as Esther Pratt slips out of her driveway in an oddly quiet little Geo Metro, flips on the air conditioner and heads down Arrow Highway to buy potting soil.
The car has been converted to run on an electric motor the size of a shoe box and Pratt, 27, has been driving it daily on the 20-mile round trip to her job in Monrovia. She has been driving it to the gym, to friends’ homes for dinner, to the softball field--at speeds as high as 60 m.p.h.
And she likes it.
“It’s nice not going to the gas station,” Pratt says on the way back, her bag of potting soil on the back seat. “It’s nice not getting out, pumping the gas in your business suit, with that smell on your hands. You just go home and plug it in.”
The big U.S. and foreign auto makers are skeptical. And the vehicles built so far have technical and financial drawbacks. But fearlessly--or recklessly, to hear critics--California is rolling ahead to an electric future.
In a state whose folkways have been defined by the internal combustion engine, transportation experts see a new array of electric vehicles entering everyday life, changing how millions think about getting from here to there.
It is a transformation that could begin sooner than most people think.
In just four years, the first mass market electric vehicles of modern times are due in California showrooms--forced there by state air pollution rules.
And if California’s major electric utilities, urban planners and environmentalists have their way, hundreds of thousands of conventional cars will be replaced by a growing profusion of specialized electric vehicles: shorter-range commuter electrics, three-wheeled neighborhood cars, electric delivery vans, bikes and trolleys.
But the new electric cars will require changed--and, in some ways, lowered--consumer expectations.
The standard internal combustion car cannot be replaced yet by an all-purpose electric vehicle with the same driving range--and price tag--of today’s gasoline autos. Even the sturdiest promoters of electric vehicles would be happy to see them making up a third of the state’s vehicle fleet two decades from now.
To achieve even that will require massive investment in infrastructure--everything from construction of public service stations to rewiring residential garages for home charging. Skeptics say that a great deal of ratepayer money will go to support cars that the public will not buy. Visionaries plan how restaurants and shopping malls can lure customers with free charging stations in their parking lots, how communities can be planned around the characteristics of the electric car.
Part of that vision is the creation of a new industry in California. Manufacturing components for alternative-fuel vehicles has become one of the few defense industry conversion ideas to catch the public imagination in the state.
UCLA’s Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies recently predicted that electric car industries could generate 24,000 new jobs in Southern California. Estimates by Calstart--a consortium of 90 parts makers, research labs, utilities and public agencies to promote transportation manufacturing in the state--go as high as 55,000 jobs.
The shortcomings of electric cars now available, however, are evident from behind the wheel of Pratt’s white Geo.
A loaner from Southern California Edison Co. in the utility’s first test of how people use electric vehicles in ordinary life, the car has a whiny drive train and a range of only 30 to 35 miles between charges, which take eight hours. The cost? A steep $26,000.
Better technology exists, offering sports-car-swift performance and a range of 100 to 120 miles--but at price tags of $60,000 or more. There are electric cars that cost less--some under $10,000--but they have their own limitations.
Proponents argue that mass production would bring the $60,000 electrics down to the $20,000 range. And they say that even cars like Pratt’s have practical uses today. After all, the average Southern California driver’s workday commute is less than 30 miles; trips to the market or movies are much shorter than that.
The challenge for electric car entrepreneurs is persuading Californians that the electric car, however limited, is here to stay--and persuading them to make the lifestyle changes that the first electric cars will require.
Apparently, there is no shortage of entrepreneurs, utility executives and regulators who are willing to try.
A New Philosophy
Shortly after noon one day this summer, in front of Yves’ Bistro in Anaheim Hills, Dwight MacCurdy is trying to get a word in edgewise.
An electric vehicle project manager for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, MacCurdy is attempting to explain the merits of two tiny Swiss cars neatly filling a single parking space.
But a tall, hefty passerby keeps interrupting.
“When are you gonna sell ‘em?” he demands.
“How much?”
“Who makes ‘em?”
“When can I buy one?”
MacCurdy says later that he gets such questions all the time. Word appears to have spread that vehicles that once were no more than science fiction sketches--like the 5-by-9-foot Swiss prototypes--are just around the corner.
These new electric vehicles are critically different from today’s cars, however.
First, they depend on the safety of light, immensely strong composite materials--now more common in aerospace and Formula One race cars. The Swiss cars are made of carbon-fiber-reinforced plastics that form an extremely stiff, crash-resistant capsule around the passenger compartment.
Secondly, these vehicles spring from a transportation philosophy that assumes there are myriad ways to reach the other end of a road. The car you drive to school or the train station need not be the same car you drive across the state.
Drivers might own two cars--a conventional auto for longer trips and a more limited electric for the daily commute and neighborhood shopping. Or, a driver might own only an electric, renting a long-haul car when the need arises.
Indeed, as the 1998 state deadline for introducing electric cars draws near, interest in California is centering on cars with limited uses.
“We want to build cars like these in Sacramento,” MacCurdy says of the Swiss prototypes, which meet federal freeway standards and are far more comfortable inside than they appear.
The Sacramento Municipal Utility District this year is putting $17.5 million--$15 million of that in federal money--into electric shuttle buses and a campaign to attract an industry to manufacture these “neighborhood” or “station” cars.
Green Motor Works Inc. in North Hollywood, the first Los Angeles-area showroom for electric cars, has focused its sales efforts on the Kewet, a Danish neighborhood car that starts at $12,900.
That many of the first EVs people buy will be second, or even third, family cars reflects the problems that electric car makers face trying to equal today’s gasoline-powered vehicles.
Alan Cocconi, the restless engineering brain behind A.C. Propulsion, a fledgling company in San Dimas, is tackling the performance limits of electric vehicles head on.
A key member of the team that designed General Motors Corp.’s Impact--the first modern electric car designed from the ground up to be a mass market auto--Cocconi has come out with his own widely praised car, a converted Honda CRX.
His ELX has performance numbers that are the envy of entrepreneurs: a range of 132 miles at freeway speeds on a single battery charge, 0 to 60 m.p.h. acceleration in under 8 seconds.
“It’s the best I’ve ever seen. It’s just an extremely efficient drive train and vehicle,” said Juan Osborn, the California Air Resources Board engineer who tested the car.
Yet, even with improved batteries acquired this summer, Cocconi’s car needs a new set--at roughly $1,600--every 10,000 miles.
And the base price of the car is $70,000--although in production of 1,000 units or more, Cocconi believes the cost would drop to less than a third of that. By comparison, the base price of a gasoline-powered CRX, no longer in production, was $9,400.
An Electric Neighborhood
Ellen V. needs to run lots of errands today. At 8 a.m., she catches her community EV shuttle to the nearby “intelligent plaza,” where she uses her debit card to rent a CS (community service) EV for the day. She first drives to her telecommuting office, where she needs to put in an hour dealing with fax responses and updating her computer files. Later, she will visit her sick niece, do a little shopping, lunch with a friend, and park her CS EV at the rail terminal to go downtown for the afternoon. It can be rented there by another user, and Ellen will take the shuttle home when she returns.
So goes a day in the life of a hypothetical resident of Los Angeles’ Crenshaw district, in a scenario drawn by UCLA’s Lewis Center. The scheme--in which existing electric vehicle technology is used to revitalize the sprawling district--was a winning entry in a national contest sponsored by Southern California Edison to sketch possible infrastructures to accommodate electric vehicles.
This electrified Crenshaw would boast many of the transportation visions of urban planners, cutting down on heavily polluting short trips in gasoline-powered cars and collecting riders for a planned extension of the Metro Red Line.
Electric shuttle buses on main streets would take Ellen V. to a local transportation hub--the Lewis Center’s “intelligent plaza”--where she could catch the train downtown. Or she could use her all-purpose transportation debit card to rent the electric “station car” she needs for the day.
The cards not only could be used to pay shuttle and train fares but could pay for electric vehicle charging at sidewalk devices in parking lots, or at posts combined with parking meters on commercial streets.
Such plans are becoming reality. The Bay Area Rapid Transit District has the funds to begin leasing 45 station cars to its employees and Pacific Gas & Electric Co. workers next spring. If the test works, the cars would be available to other commuters by 1995.
The $150-to-$175 per month lease will cover a car, insurance, maintenance and the cost of charging at a BART station. By comparison, the American Automobile Assn. estimates that the average car costs $484 a month to own and operate.
“The goal is to offset people from buying a second or third vehicle for the household,” said Victoria Nerenberg, BART manager of technology advances.
In Southern California, Edison is pondering whether it should guarantee installation of a charging receptacle in every ratepayer’s garage within 72 hours after the purchase of an electric car.
And under consideration in the California Legislature are more than a dozen bills to promote electric vehicles--from a proposal to mandate charging facilities in the garages of all new residences to Highway Patrol training for the inevitable electric car accidents.
Swords Into Subcompacts
On a warm May afternoon, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Federico F. Pena and his entourage have just left the Burbank offices of Calstart, the consortium promoting an advanced transportation industry in California.
Calstart co-founder Lon E. Bell and President Mike Gage are relaxed at a conference table after hosting a brisk tour of the premises that ended with a photo session beside three electric buses.
Bell, now manager of the group’s Showcase Electric Vehicle program, is in a reflective mood.
“The consumer has been genuinely excited,” he says of Calstart’s small blue car, which has been displayed at auto shows in Tokyo, Geneva, Los Angeles and St. Louis.
An attractively designed frame, the Showcase Vehicle is not meant to be mass produced--or even driven. Instead, it was built to show off California-made electric car components in various stages of design, research or production.
It is the first of a string of projects the consortium has launched to promote transportation manufacturing in the state--in part to help replace high-tech jobs lost in the aerospace and defense industries.
International auto manufacturers have made “well over 100 inquiries” about the components, Bell says, asking for price quotations or how they can evaluate the technology. A few have placed orders.
Calstart took form when Bell, a Caltech-trained scientist-turned-entrepreneur, found an interested ear in Michael R. Peevey, then president of Edison.
Why Edison? The nation’s electric utilities could gain a lot, without a big investment, from a turn to electric transportation. It is a boost they could use. Utilities’ revenue used to grow 7% to 8% a year. But for two decades, growth has crawled along at about 2% a year--largely because of industrial conservation.
The utilities also have enormous, unused, power-generating potential at night, when the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that 94% of electric vehicles would be recharged. Indeed, they say they could fuel up to 40 million electric cars without building another power plant.
EVs also could open up new lines of business for utilities--public refueling stations and battery replacement centers. Edison and other California utilities will spend almost $30 million in 1993 in research and planning to support electric vehicles.
Edison has remained one of Calstart’s strongest supporters; although Peevey has left the utility, he remains as chairman of Calstart’s board of directors. Indeed, the consortium enjoys immense support from business leaders, politicians and planners who see it as a bright, practical hope amid a lot of palaver about converting California’s defense industry to peacetime aims.
But it also has its detractors.
As California’s major proponent of electric cars, Calstart has been accused of empire building in its pursuit of government grants. Even some supporters would like to see other means of promoting electric car technologies beyond Calstart. And some fault the Showcase Vehicle for not displaying the very best EV technology.
“The drive system is probably one of the worst you could come up with,” said Wally Rippel, a veteran electric car engineer. “Whenever you showcase something, you should showcase the best. This hurts all of us.”
In the ferment of competing inventions, marketing schemes and personal visions, Bell and Gage--the gregarious, politically astute former president of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power--have heard this complaint before.
Calstart’s philosophy, they say, is to show off the widest variety of technologies to buyers--to prove that a broad manufacturing base for electric vehicles is growing in the state that gave them new life.
And the Showcase car is only one of many projects that Calstart has begun, Gage added. The consortium also is pushing electric buses, fuel cells, station cars and an all-purpose chassis for electric cars and trucks.
“There is a fair amount of misunderstanding about what we do,” Gage said. “There are many paths to the future. . . . We’re going to support them all.”
Land of Opportunity
Among the most optimistic proponents of electric cars is Diane O. Wittenberg, Edison’s manager of electric transportation, who believes that the 1998 California deadline has created the critical mass of auto manufacturers and small entrepreneurs that inevitably will bring electric vehicles to the marketplace.
“Somebody’s going to be out there before 1998--possibly as early as 1995--with a viable vehicle,” Wittenberg said.
Indeed, small, privately financed companies are bristling with ideas and plans.
Ken Koch, who sells kits to convert gasoline cars to electric out of his Upland home, doubled his income in 1992 and is running 25% ahead of that this year.
Gary Starr, founder of a once-small Northern California converter, sauntered into this year’s Los Angeles Auto Show, trailing a bevy of public relations functionaries.
His company, Solar Electric Engineering Inc., is undergoing nearly explosive growth. So far in 1993, it has taken on a high-powered management staff, moved to larger headquarters in Sebastopol, opened a second car conversion operation under the name Electricar in South-Central Los Angeles, entered a joint agreement with a small Florida company to produce an electric sports car and a utility van, and recently bought an electric utility vehicle manufacturer in Redlands.
Taylor-Dunn Manufacturing Co. of Anaheim, which has been manufacturing electric utility vehicles for more than 40 years, has had to beef up its work force from 160 to 200 workers recently.
“This is real business,” said Milton L. Sneller, Taylor-Dunn chief operating officer. The company’s largest recent order is for 400 electric trucks for a Mexican potato chip company, a deal worth more than $5 million.
In Van Nuys, Malcolm Bricklin, the bombastic entrepreneur who imported the Subaru as well as the ill-fated Yugo, has joined Malcolm R. Currie, former chairman of Delco Electronics Corp. and Hughes Aircraft Co., and Chaz Haba, a longtime electric car promoter.
Their Electric Vehicles Corp., built around a laptop computer battery the size of a compact disc, has working prototypes for everything from a $400-to-$600 detachable electric bicycle motor to electric cars that look remarkably like your vehicle, which is what they are--privately-owned cars converted to electricity for $8,000 and up.
“This is big,” Bricklin said.
But so far, the company’s advances have yet to be verified, as is the case with many players in the new industry. Standard performance tests may be offered by the California Air Resources Board soon, but do not now exist.
Bricklin has hinted at attracting $100 million in investment and taking over the old GM plant in Van Nuys to do assembly line conversions of gasoline cars. The company also has made performance claims for its batteries that raise skeptical eyebrows among electric car technical experts.
The Haba battery soon will be tested at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Engineering Lab, as well as in a van that will be loaned to a Phoenix utility company.
“So far, they perform pretty well, but we’re a long way from real test results,” said Gary Purcell, a project manager for electric vehicle and infrastructure development at the Electric Power Research Institute, the utilities’ research arm. “And there are a lot of tricks to this trade.”
NEXT: Car makers around the globe are rushing to meet California’s mandate for zero-emission vehicles.
Transportation Enters the Electric Future
As automakers work to develop practical electric vehicles, urban planners and utility engineers are concentrating on infrastructure systems to support--and make best use of--the new cars. Public charging facilities much like today’s gasoline service stations are likely to be common. So will mobile charging operations, like the American Automobile Assn.’s flat-tire and towing service. But other systems will be unique to the electric future.
PUBLIC STREET CHARGING
A) Public parking spots on the street or in commercial lots could be equipped with pedestals that allow drivers to charge their batteries while they shop, dine or see a movie.
B) The pedestals will accept debit cards to pay for parking, battery charging and even electronic diagnosis of the car’s operating condition.
C) Inductive charging: Many electric cars now use a standard plug and socket. Other systems transfer power magnetically--without metal-to-metal contact--allowing rapid charging and safe use in wet weather. One scheme uses a plastic paddle inserted in a slot on the car. Others use matching metal plates, one imbedded in a parking space, one on the car’s underside, or one on a post, the other on the front of the car.
Transportation Center
Planners foresee electric shuttle buses and neighborhood vehicles intersecting at transit centers with trains and buses. The centers will have facilities for renting and charging electric vehicles, alongside restaurants, supermarkets and department stores.
Preferential Parking for Electric Cars: While transportation centers will accommodate all kinds of vehicles, the most convenient commuter parking would be reserved for electric cars.
Electric Vehicle Rentals: Commuters and people running errands will be able to rent a variety of electric cars to suit the task: one-person three-wheelers, light trucks, small “station” cars or electric/gasoline hybrid cars for longer trips.
Queue Charging: Station cars, rented by the hour or day, will be returned to a device that charges and allows servicing as the cars move down a line, something like a car wash.
Private Cars: Owners of electric cars could charge at night, when rates are cheaper, in their home garages. The charging connection could be as simple as a conventional electric plug.
Automatic Valet Parking: Commuters and private car owners taking the train will park their cars for the day in a lot that uses automated guideways to efficiently stack the cars.
Indoor Driving: With no emissions, electric vehicles can operate as safely indoors as out. Delivery vans transport goods directly to and from showroom floors. Parking structures won’t need expensive ventilation systems.
Sources: “The Electric Vehicle and the American Community: A National Planning and Design Competition,” Southern California Edison; L.A. Department of Water and Power; UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies; Bay Area Rapid Transit District; GM Hughes Electronics; James Bradbury Architects, Philadelphia; the Odyssey Group of Electric Vehicles of America, Maynard, Mass.; Praxis Architects, San Francisco; Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory; Miralles Associates Inc., Altadena; Pasadena Water and Power Department; CH2M Hill Inc., Santa Ana; Daniel V. Scully/Architect, Peterborough, N.H.
Other Alternative-Fuel Vehicles
Electricity is not the only option for powering lower-emission vehicles. Indeed, while it is the only zero-emission option now available, many experts believe other fuels will prove viable in at least reduced-emission vehicles. An assessment of the options:
COMPRESSED NATURAL GAS (CNG)
Status: Fuels thousands of vehicles already on U.S. highways. Mass production is still a couple of years away, at the earliest.
Advantages:
* Substantial U.S. supply of natural gas.
* Easy--though expensive--to convert conventional gasoline cars to CNG.
* Cheaper: the equivalent of buying gasoline at 70 cents a gallon.
Disadvantages:
* Requires heavy, bulky fuel tanks.
* Public refueling stations expensive to build.
* Lower performance and shorter range than gasoline vehicles.
Emissions benefits:
* Burns 80% cleaner than gasoline.
METHANOL/FLEX-FUEL
Status: Some heavy vehicles--including 354 buses operated by Southern California’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority--run on pure methanol. More than 10,000 flex-fuel vehicles--running on methanol-gasoline combinations--are now on U.S. roads.
Advantages:
* Can be made from natural gas (98% of current production) and a range of renewable sources.
* Requires only modest changes in gasoline engines and fueling infrastructure.
* Higher octane than gasoline, giving 5% better performance.
Disadvantages:
* Highly corrosive.
* Lower energy content than gasoline, so requires bigger fuel tanks.
* Fuel cost slightly higher than gasoline.
Emissions benefits:
* An 85% methanol mix burns 30% to 50% cleaner than pure gasoline; pure methanol vehicles potentially could be much cleaner.
HYDROGEN
Status: Still largely experimental. Vehicles could be powered by hydrogen fuel cells or by engines that burn the gas. Practical, wide-scale use is at least a decade away.
Advantages:
* A high-energy fuel, boosting vehicle range.
* Potentially unlimited fuel supply if produced from water; currently made from natural gas.
* Produces no carbon dioxide, the gas blamed for possible global warming.
Disadvantages:
* Highly explosive, though ultimately could be less dangerous than gasoline.
* Costly and difficult to produce.
* Costly and difficult to store.
Emissions benefits:
* If produced from water using solar energy--and then used in a fuel cell--would be a zero-emissions technology.
PROPANE
Status: Broadly used in transportation worldwide. But environmentalists, regulators and auto makers contend that propane makes the most sense for heavy vehicles as a replacement for diesel.
Advantages:
* A proven low-cost fuel.
* Public refueling infrastructure in place.
* Non-toxic, so storage tanks are exempt from environmental regulations.
Disadvantages:
* Supplies are limited, compared with other alternatives. At most could replace 10% of gasoline.
* Highly flammable.
Emissions benefits:
* At least 50% cleaner than conventional gasoline.
Source: California Air Resources Board, California Energy Commission, South Coast Air Quality Management District, Ward’s Communications, Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., Chrysler Corp., LP Gas Coalition.
