The Electric Car: Its Time Is Here--and So Is Its Opposition
After Times auto reviewer Paul Dean drove a state-of-the-art electric car in 1991, he wrote: “Electric motoring is best compared to softball. The equipment, rules and technique are similar. But the pace and excitement are far from the real thing. . . . The (50-mile) range of electric cars restricts their roles to suburban puddle jumpers. Speed and acceleration are dangerously beneath the entrance pace of the Los Angeles freeway system.”
Fast-forward to last month, when Dean tested a car he dubbed Sparky--the experimental Ford Ecostar van, which has a range of 100 miles between recharges. “Throughout seven days with Sparky, we stopped for nothing except daily destinations. The little van not only ran at freeway speeds but actually passed many among the snorting, polluting, environmentally incorrect. It accelerated almost as well as the breeziest subcompacts and . . . held that performance whether the battery was 100% charged or nearly flat.”
What a world of difference! It’s this sort of progress that’s stiffening the will of the state and its Air Resources Board to require that zero-emission vehicles constitute 2% of the new-car market in the 1998 model year and 10% of sales by 2003.
The Big Three U.S. auto makers, which have claimed over the years that seat belts, gas-mileage standards and air bags could ruin their industry, scorn electric cars. But even as they lobby against the California standards they are reluctantly joining research efforts. They know that they could otherwise lose the whole market to public-private initiatives like California’s Calstart. Now the major oil companies, their gasoline sales on the line, are putting up an anti-electric public relations blitz that puts the auto makers to shame.
The Times’ Michael Parrish wrote earlier this month that an ostensibly “grass-roots” protest against utility-company investments in alternative vehicles is funded by the Western States Petroleum Assn., which represents oil companies. The effort involves 200,000 letters to utility ratepayers (about a “hidden tax on your gas and electric bill”), a petition effort and demonstrations at public utility offices.
The oil companies have long argued that their “reformulated gasolines,” in conjunction with a new generation of catalytic converters, are enough by themselves to reach California’s clean-air goals. Another often-heard argument is that electric cars won’t really reduce pollution because electric power plants will have to burn something to produce the juice.
Opponents also argue from the consumer end that auto-addicted Californians will never accept the distance and performance limits of electric cars, that the right battery hasn’t been invented and that anyway it takes years to gear up for production. Then there’s the $30,000-and-up price tag, to say nothing of the $2,500 to $15,000 replacement tab for a state-of-the-art battery.
In a perverse way, alternative-vehicle advocates are happy about this burst of opposition. As they see it, only powerful issues attract powerful opposition. And, just as happily, they see answers to the objections.
First, the fuel issue. Low-emission gasolines are certainly welcome; indeed, they are the biggest part of the clean-air solution; oil companies that have been reformulation pioneers, such as Arco, deserve great credit. But it’s the zero-emission vehicles that take the necessary last step; vehicles are the source of more than 70% of air pollution, so that problem must be attacked at its primary source.
A huge bonus of electric and electric/gas hybrid vehicles is that if California can produce good ones first, Europe and even Japan will buy them. That’s the attraction for aerospace companies involved in Calstart. The former chairmen of Lockheed and Hughes Aircraft are co-chairs of Project California, an effort to focus state officials and business leaders on finding industries for the future. And battery makers say production can begin easily by 1998.
As for reducing pollution, 35% of California’s power comes from plants burning natural gas; 20% is hydro-power imports, and the rest is a mix of nuclear, coal and renewables like wind and solar. The result, say air-quality advocates, is that electric cars are 97% cleaner than today’s autos. Investments now in such things as consumer recharging stations will turn a profit later as more vehicles go electric. And the batteries on the Ford Ecostar are recyclable.
The consumer issues are serious, but they rest on dated assumptions, among them that two-car families all want two long-distance vehicles and that innovative lease arrangements won’t lure consumers. They also assume electric cars won’t keep improving fast and prices won’t go down steeply with mass production.
Five years ago, CD-ROM was not viewed as a consumer technology because of its stratospheric cost--it was targeted at industrial and subsidized buyers, mostly schools; less than 20 years ago, barely programmable two-head VCRs weighed 30 pounds, lacked remote controls and cost $1,000; and 100 years ago, buggy makers were arguing about automobiles scaring the horses.
Today, the thing to be scared of is standing still. Go, Sparky.
