HUNTINGTON BEACH : Students Switch On to Electric Car Concept

After taking a test drive Wednesday inside Response II--a sporty-looking vibrant blue car that runs on both gasoline and electricity--middle school student Franklin Cheng declared it the car of the future.

“It’s comfortable and smooth to drive, and it’s cool-looking,” said Cheng, 13, of the car built and designed by engineering students at Lawrence Technological University in Michigan.

“It’s going to end pollution and give us good clean air for everyone to breath,” added Cheng, an eighth-grader at Isaac L. Sowers Middle School.

The school’s eighth-grade science students Wednesday got a firsthand lesson on the environmental benefits of these alternative-fuel vehicles. The visit was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, which will have its 1995 Clean Air Road Rally on Friday and Saturday in the Los Angeles area.

“If electric vehicles and alternative-fuel vehicles are going to be widely used, you have to have a buying public who’s ready for them,” said Shelley Launey, program manager for the Department of Energy. “And we’re getting started by educating the future car buyers, mechanics and automotive engineers.”

Classmate Rebecca Goldstein, 14, was impressed with her ride in another car called AfterShock, but had some second thoughts.

“It was fun, it was quiet, and, it was very hot in the car! It was just weird in there,” Rebecca said. “But it doesn’t pollute the air.”

AfterShock is a one-of-a-kind electric- and gas-powered vehicle, with gull-wing doors and 26 batteries. It can travel 100 miles on $1 worth of electricity.

Built by UC Davis engineering students, the car lacks air conditioning and roll-down windows. They pose a challenge for the university students who are still trying to perfect an efficient ventilation system.

Andrew Frank, a professor at UC Davis, said his students’ goal is to build an electric-powered car “to get you from here to there on zero emissions and not pollute the environment.”

“Our objective is for a cleaner environment. You don’t want to drive an all-gasoline car.”