Out of the Labs and Onto the Streets of Europe, Japan : Transit: Compactness of the regions, environmental concerns give a jump-start to electric vehicle industry.

It’s pouring rain, but Eri Hayashi has dragged her husband and two preschool-age sons to an electric car fair at Yoyogi Park to take a look at the latest models.

“We come here every year,” says Eri, an architect who co-manages a real estate development company with her husband. She blames her two sons’ severe asthma and skin allergies on Tokyo pollution. By the end of the year, she plans to get into the business of selling electric cars.

Eri says she would pay double the price of a gasoline car for a clean EV. With one-third of the youngsters at school suffering from skin problems that she worries are pollution-related, she believes that others would too.

“We have high hopes.” she says.

She may be overly optimistic. For decades, electric vehicles with their quiet, emission-free motors have run on little more than high hopes. But driven by rising environmental concerns--and California regulators, who have ordered the world’s biggest car makers to sell zero-emission cars in the state by 1998--auto companies in Japan and Europe are pushing EVs out of the laboratories and public relations portfolios into selected markets.

Toyota--which in 1998 must offer 5,000 to 6,000 electric cars for sale in California to meet the requirements--decided its decade-old experiments did not go far enough. Last summer, it staffed a new division with 100 engineers and gave it the sole mission of developing a 1998-model EV for the California market.

According to Masahiro Okawa, general manager of the Toyota division, the biggest headache will be finding buyers for cars that cost three times as much as their gasoline-powered cousins and cannot travel much more than 80 miles before getting an eight-hour recharge.

“Compared to gasoline engines, electric cars are like babies,” said Okawa, echoing the complaints of major auto makers around the globe. “Even if there are major breakthroughs, it could take 20 to 30 years before they are viable.”

Ironically, although Europe and Japan have been less aggressive than California in promoting battery-powered cars, these regions may end up being the first to put them to use.

The slow traffic and short trips characteristic of Europe and Japan’s dense cities are ideally suited to the limited range of the electric car. Moreover, with gasoline at about $4 a gallon in these regions, a car can run a mile on electricity--recharged at cheap night rates--at half the price of gasoline.

Already, important niches are emerging in which electric cars are proving a practical, if costly, alternative.

Paris has a fleet of 135 battery-run garbage trucks. Frequent stops with the engine idling make garbage trucks a big contributor to pollution. The electric trucks have no emissions. And because the motor shuts down when the truck is idle, energy is saved at every stop.

A group of Japanese food cooperatives, meanwhile, has begun using electric trucks to deliver vegetables and fruits to neighborhoods in Tokyo.

“We sell natural foods, and it doesn’t make sense if we are delivering the products in a truck that pollutes,” said Michikazu Shikata of the CO-OP Electric Vehicle Development Co.

The company, created with the support of 13 major food cooperatives, developed a two-ton truck with Isuzu Motors. Four trucks are in use, and the ambitious goal is to replace all 3,000 of the co-ops’ delivery trucks with electric vehicles by the end of the decade. Housewives say they appreciate not having exhaust blown into their faces as they pick up groceries.

Noboru Amatatsu, assistant manager of Isuzu Motors’ EV planning office, says stores that take deliveries in basement warehouses are also interested in the trucks, which cut lingering pollution in enclosed work spaces. And companies that make early morning deliveries in residential neighborhoods see electric vehicles as a way of cutting sound pollution.

Nihon Unyu, Japan’s largest delivery service, is testing a small fleet of electric trucks. Cities all over Japan have fleets of electric vans and minivans that monitor air and water pollution levels.

Japan’s goal is to put 200,000 EVs on the road by 2000, up from 1,000 today. And the limitations of batteries turn out to be less of a problem than one might suppose for Japanese commercial fleets. Although the Isuzu truck can travel only about 31 miles on a charge, Amatatsu says a company survey found that about half of the 8 million one- and two-ton trucks in Japan are in service less than 30 miles a day.

Minivans and motorcycles travel even less. Honda’s new electric motorcycle can travel 25 miles on one charge, plenty for the typical commuter in Japan. An electric cord under the seat can be plugged into any home outlet overnight.

The growing use of electric cars in Japan is the result of a small but persistent government promotional effort.

In 1971, the government invested $50 million in a collaborative project among university and industry research labs to build early EV prototypes. “Japan was afraid its rush to build nuclear power plants would result in a surplus of electricity,” said Shiro Kawakatsu, director of Daihatsu’s EV development division. The government made it easier for local agencies to buy electric cars by paying up to half the purchase price.

The Ministry of International Trade and Industry also established the Japan Electric Vehicles Assn. to promote the development and use of electric cars. Under one program, the association purchases electric cars and leases them to private companies at affordable rates. It also is promoting the standardization of key components in EVs to make them cheaper to build, maintain and repair.

Like California utilities, Tokyo Electric Power Co. wants to see greater use of electricity at night, when demand is low and many of its power plants stand idle. The utility is testing electric “fill-up stations” that would store up energy at night and charge batteries in just five minutes at downtown sites to extend the range of EVs.

For years, the annoying clanking sounds and limited range of Daihatsu’s electric minivan reinforced the EV’s poor image. Tokyo Electric, with a fleet of 130 electric cars--mostly Daihatsus--recently decided to change that. The power company, working with a sports car designer, built the Iza, a sleek, silver-gray electric sports car that has motors in every wheel and a top speed of 110 m.p.h.

The problem with the Iza? It cost a cool $1.8 million. Price is a problem for everybody. Even the clunky Daihatsu minivan sells for $28,000--and its batteries must be replaced every two years at a cost of $5,600. The Isuzu truck sells for $280,000, though the company hopes to cuts the price to about $70,000 through higher-volume production.

“Right now each part is virtually handmade,” said Amatatsu of Isuzu.

Electric cars have remaining technical problems, as well, such as the absence of reliable indicators to show how much energy is left in the battery.

“Sometimes you may want to do an extra errand, but you never know when the battery is going to go out,” said Manabe Maruyama of Kawasaki City’s environmental section, which owns 30 electric cars. “That is very worrying.”

Safety is also an issue. Electric cars are so quiet that pedestrians cannot hear the cars coming and often step out onto the street without looking. Auto makers say small production volumes make it costly to produce the several dozen cars needed to go through all the required safety tests.

All these problems represent major obstacles for auto makers trying to meet California’s new clean car code.

Still, some progress is being made. Toyota has developed a more efficient motor and has figured out a way to use brakes that can slow the car and generate electricity at the same time. The company thinks, too, that it has the solution for measuring battery energy levels, as well as a more efficient air conditioner.

Toyota says it is tapping technology from around the world in an effort to improve its electric cars. It has exchanged information with Denver’s Unique Mobility, which has a good motor. It is also impressed by power transistors developed for military applications by Westinghouse and General Electric.

“The technologies aren’t immediately usable, but you have to compare them to what you have, and adjust. That is what we are strong at,” Okawa said.

To meet that 1998 timetable, Okawa says Toyota will determine what technologies to incorporate in its EV by the end of this year. He figures that to be even remotely affordable, the car will have to use conventional batteries rather than one of the many expensive batteries in development.

As a result, Okawa figures that the new car will not be able to do much more than 62 miles in normal driving on a single charge.

To sell enough of the cars to meet California regulations, Toyota believes that it may have to price them at money-losing levels. But that could mean the Japanese firm would face dumping charges from its U.S. competitors.

“There is no escape,” said Okawa. “It’s a bad law.”

Masaji Fujinaka, a professor at Tokyo Denki (Electric) University--probably Japan’s most vocal backer of electric cars--suggests that rather than require companies to sell electric cars, as California is doing, the better approach would be to encourage opinion leaders such as doctors and lawyers to begin driving electric cars as symbols of prestige.

Fujinaka, who drives a small Suzuki plastered with solar cells, says the electric car is perfect as a second car. He charges his solar panels on the roof of his home and near the parking lot at his university office. In Japan, it can take days, but in sunny California, Fujinaka believes that the approach would be practical.

“I use it for going around town and sometimes even for day trips,” he said. “Fully charged, the car can go 150 miles,” the professor boasted, bragging that he has his students assemble a new electric car for him every year.

Of course, if the battery runs out, he is stuck, Fujinaka admitted.