Amerigon Puts Hopes on 4 Car Product Lines : The Burbank firm uses aerospace technology on components. It calls a voice-activated navigation system its best bet.

Lon Bell has the demeanor of a genial, slightly rumpled college professor, but behind his thick glasses ticks the brain of an ambitious businessman.

Bell, 53, best known for founding the nonprofit electric car consortium Calstart, is also chairman and chief executive of Amerigon Inc. in Burbank. The Caltech-trained engineer, who got rich selling air-bag crash sensors, now hopes to make his second fortune with Amerigon, a 3-year-old company aiming to turn aerospace technology into high-tech components for gas-powered and electric cars.

With $10.5 million from an initial public stock offering in June, Amerigon is readying four products: a voice-activated navigation system that will tell drivers how to get there from here, a car-seat heating and cooling system, a computerized device for directing the flow of energy in an electric vehicle, and an electric car chassis.

As much as any individual in Southern California, Bell is convinced that the celebrated “defense conversion” idea of transferring aerospace know-how into commercial successes in other industries will help trigger the area’s economic recovery.

But will anybody buy Amerigon’s products? That remains to be seen.

Since April, 1991, when Amerigon was formed, the company has run up $4.2 million in losses. Its $3.5 million in revenue thus far has come mostly from modest government grants, while product sales have been mainly for prototypes. The company’s financial condition was tenuous enough for Amerigon to note in its stock prospectus that auditor Price Waterhouse expressed “substantial doubt as to the ability of the company to continue as a going concern.” With the cash raised in the stock sale, Bell said Amerigon can now keep running for at least a year, after which he expects product sales will rev up.

Undaunted by the challenge ahead, Bell said, “American, Japanese, European and Korean auto manufacturers have all been willing to listen about our new technologies, to see if they fit into their product lines.”

Amerigon’s first, best hope, Bell believes, is the navigation system, AudioNav, which he wants to sell to American and foreign car makers, consumer electronics concerns and rental car companies. A prototype of the system was introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show last month in Las Vegas by Fujitsu of Japan.

Fujitsu plans to buy AudioNav units from Amerigon, combine it with Fujitsu’s Eclipse compact-disc players, and sell the whole package for $1,000. (AudioNav units alone will cost about $500.) A compact disc containing the equivalent of, say, a Los Angeles and Orange County Thomas Bros. street guide, will probably be included with a system purchase, but extra discs will run about $50.

That’s not cheap, but it’s much less than auto navigation systems that have been sold in Japan for about three years by manufacturers such as Pioneer Electronic Corp. Pioneer’s rival satellite navigation system retails for $2,000 to $4,000. Like others, Pioneer now has its eyes on the U. S. auto market. “We think one day it will be a very big product,” said Michael Townsen, a Pioneer senior vice president of car electronics.

General Motors Corp. recently said that within the next two years it will offer a $2,000 satellite navigation system as an option on its Oldsmobile 88 LSS models, which will compete with AudioNav. Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Corp. have not announced any plans, but, said Ford spokesman John Emert, “we’re watching the market closely.”

But, while these other navigation systems give some verbal prompts, they don’t have two-way audio like AudioNav. They are activated by pushing buttons, and then show maps of the area with the suggested route highlighted on a display mounted in the car. These systems have prompted worries over safety.

Critics of AudioNav counter that--unlike the Pioneer and GM systems--it doesn’t use satellites to get real-time information on a car’s location and the best route. Instead, with AudioNav, the driver speaks into the microphone to tell the system what cross streets he is starting from, and thereafter the system calculates the rest of the trip. But global-positioning satellite technology is one reason the other systems are more expensive.

Unlike other navigation systems, once the compact disc is inserted, AudioNav is completely audio. A voice first asks, “Do you want to use your audio navigation system?” A “yes” response is picked up by a small microphone hooked to the windshield visor. After a series of verbal prompts, the driver is told how far away his destination is, how long it takes to get there and the route to take. As he drives, he is given sets of instructions, such as “Proceed one-half mile on Ventura Boulevard, then turn right on Van Nuys Boulevard.”

A more advanced version will even sense a wrong turn and ask, “Are you lost?”--then explain how to get back on track.

At the Consumer Electronics Show, potential customers seemed to like AudioNav, which Fujitsu plans to have on the market by fall. “At that price, we’ll be selling some units,” said Ed Dobric, owner of Altered Sound, an audio system retailer in Ontario, Canada.

“It’s wonderful, like having a Thomas Guide in your car that talks to you,” said Ken Kramer, owner of the Clip Joint For Film, a Burbank stock film footage company. “It tells you where to go.

“Of course, I have a wife who does that.”

Bell also has high hopes for Amerigon’s variable temperature seat units, which he believes could replace existing car seat heaters and, in some cars, conventional heaters and air conditioners.

Unlike car seat heaters now available, which use elements similar to those in electric blankets, Amerigon’s system employs the same solid-state devices used in infrared sensors on missiles. The units change temperature as controls are adjusted. Hot or cold air is circulated through ducts and pads in the seat so that the surface of the seat warms or cools, and air is lightly blown through the seat.

Lear Seating Corp., a big car-seat manufacturer based in Southfield, Mich., has purchased some of the Amerigon units and built them into prototype car seats, which it will exhibit at an auto trade show later this month.

Bell said that a few auto makers have outfitted Amerigon’s heating and cooling system in prototypes, and seats have been sold for five new electric buses for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and McClellan Air Force Base. Bell also plans to market the units for commercial plane seats.

Amerigon’s other two products depend on development of an electric car industry. That outcome is in no way assured, despite California’s mandate that 2% of all vehicles sold here in 1998 be emission-free and a vote last week by several Eastern states to support California-like emission standards.

The three U. S. auto makers say the California law is unrealistic given the electric car technology barriers still remaining, including the need for a lighter, lower-cost battery that can go long distances before recharging. Ford last month said it might cancel its program to build an electric vehicle from the ground up, calling the effort financially wasteful.

Only GM has unveiled a prototype electric car built from the ground up--the two-seat Impact. But GM has backed away from its plans to sell the electric car by 1995.

Nonetheless, Bell contends that electric cars are inevitable. It was that faith that spurred him in 1992 to launch Calstart, a high-profile consortium of Southern California companies that has received significant government funding in its quest to convert aerospace talent and technology to an electric car component industry.

As part of that effort, Amerigon is preparing its energy management system. The computerized device would be the electronic brains of an electric car, funneling energy to appropriate places. Bell said the system would help get the most out of a battery charge by telling the rear window defroster, for instance, to cut back when power is needed to accelerate.

Amerigon has also been working with fellow Calstart members Kaiser Aluminum Corp. and Hughes Aircraft Co. to develop a chassis for an electric car. This would be an aluminum frame housing the motor, brakes and everything else a stripped-down electric car needs. An auto maker could buy the chassis and add its own body and interior.

Some criticism has surfaced in the past over Amerigon’s relationship with Calstart, including questions as to whether Bell uses the consortium for personal advantage. Amerigon received $1.1 million for managing Calstart’s Showcase Vehicle program, which displays products by Amerigon and other companies on a demonstration car.

After founding Calstart, Bell served briefly as the consortium’s president, but stepped down more than a year ago. He remains on Calstart’s board of directors and executive committee. Amerigon, with its 50 employees, shares the same offices with Calstart in a cavernous building donated rent-free by Lockheed Corp.

Aware of the perceived conflict, Bell said he plans to move Amerigon to another building in a few months.

Bell said that, despite his convictions, he’s not counting on electric cars for Amerigon’s future. That’s a lesson Bell said he learned at his former company, Technar Inc., which converted aerospace technology into air-bag sensors, eventually capturing more than 50% of the global air-bag sensor market. Bell sold Technar to TRW in 1986 and ran the company until 1991.

Bell said that if Technar had depended solely on air-bag sensors in its early stages and not sold products to defense concerns and other industries, the company could not have survived while car makers dragged their feet for years on installing air bags. Now, he said, “we have postured Amerigon to succeed with or without electric vehicles.”

But when Amerigon’s stock topped $10 a share a few months ago, portfolio manager Stephanie Leighton at Franklin Research & Development Corp. warned that it was overpriced. The stock has since fallen back to the $8 range. “Watch the orders,” Leighton said. “People have made initial prototype orders. You have to watch carefully to see if there’s follow-through on that.”

Leighton is impressed by Bell’s commitment. Amerigon’s founder has put more than $2 million of his own money into the company. And though his 59% stake in Amerigon is now worth nearly $30 million on paper, 75% of his shares are locked in escrow until the company posts an annual pretax profit of $5 million. Beginning in 1997, that profit target rises to $7.5 million and in 1998, to $10 million.

Times staff writer Jeff Yip contributed to this story.