The Debugging of Electric Cars : Transportation: Being environmentally friendly is not enough. Consumers want the vehicles of the future to behave like gas-powered ones.

Michel Wehrey’s car whined all the way home.

That was fine.

Then his wife started complaining.

That wasn’t.

Jane Wehrey understood that her marriage to a Southern California Edison engineer meant he would bring electric cars home. A supportive wife, she shares his mission for clean and silent commuting.

But howinheck could they sleep--let alone enjoy late movies and O.J. monologues--against the penetrating, heavy hum of a Honda hybrid sucking up an overnight charge beneath their bedroom window?

A trivial point.

But one well taken by Michel Wehrey, 65, program manager of Edison’s Electric Vehicle Technical Center, a taskmaster for those who build electric cars--and taste-tester for those who will be buying them.

For the past two years at Edison’s three-bay technical center in Pomona, engineer Wehrey and his knot of mechanics have been setting hard parameters and writing real-world evaluations for the birth of new-age transportation.

And they know that even if manufacturers clear the tangible, huge hurdles of slow-motion battery technology and bloated vehicle costs, it could be piddling nags like recharger noise that make a difference between energizing or grounding the nation’s electric vehicle agenda.

“Work little things first,” goes Wehrey’s Law, “because they may prevent you even getting to the major things.”

He also knows the bridge he is helping build between our electric-propelled and gasoline-powered eras must be more than short, quick and painless.

“We use the word transparent ,” says Wehrey, a French-born mechanical engineer who came to Edison via Air France, Caltech and Lockheed. “To succeed, electric vehicles should be so close to the operation of a gasoline car the differences just aren’t noticeable.

“Does the accelerator have the same feel? Does the air conditioner work as well? How convenient is the recharging plug? Will wall plugs at home accept it without tripping circuit breakers?”

And how will manufacturers address a certain lack of blessing in the holy silence of EVs?

Short of playing Henry Rollins or Sounds of Indy on the tape deck, the whistle of an electric vehicle will flutter no spirits tuned to the growl of a short block V-8. Without the mechanical gnashing of a gasoline engine drowning outside noises, the hiss and grumble of tires on freeways suddenly become earsplitting.

There’s even danger in this quiet.

“When you start a conventional car, people hear the engine and instinctively get out of the way,” adds Diane Wittenberg, vice president of electric transportation for Edison. “With an electric vehicle, there’s no sound so nobody moves.

“One solution would be to equip the car with a backup beeper . . . but for when the car is going forward.”

At the Edison center--sandwiched between a French dip shop and a plating works--electric vehicles are trucked and shipped from Detroit and Osaka; from back-yard environmentalists, global development divisions and little companies in search of quick bucks.

Some vehicle and component firms pay for the privilege of being tested by Edison so they can add its cachet to beginning reputations. The majors lease vehicles to Edison, which measures the state of all arts to better prepare its own delivery system for what could be overpowering demands of electric motoring.

Also, to be ready for our turn into the next millennium when Edison hopes to have 750 electric vehicles in service with its meter readers, field-service representatives and car-pools.

Edison works alone or with consortiums and syndicates. It accepts grants and spends its own money. Its consumer reports show neither bias nor nationalism, and its research is perpetual interrogation.

What’s the hitch in a quick charger said to restore 80% power in 20 minutes at $5 a shot? Which vehicles best lend themselves to mail delivery fleets? When does harmonic distortion become intrusive? Why does this battery work well in the heat but die in the cold? How can this 2,000-pound battery pack be slimmed by half?

“We may not be the largest facility in the world in terms of square footage,” says Wehrey. “Other facilities have more vehicles. But we’re certainly the most experienced and have been at it longer with the best technicians.”

And within a region that’s a shrine of automotive worship, as part of a city that is the world’s most notorious smog generator, and inside the first state to mandate the sale of electric cars by 1998, Edison’s test center certainly has location, location, location.

General Motors’ two-seat teardrop, the Impact, arrived here on the brink of production, the result of a $300-million experiment. Ford’s Ecostar and Chrysler’s Electric Minivan advanced their careers on what is known as the “Pomona Loop,” 20 miles of surface streets between Base Line Road and Holt Boulevard; down Mills and up Vineyard avenues.

To date, 47 experimental or commercially ready electric vehicles--from a Conceptor van built in Canada to Geo Metros and Toyota Corollas converted by California companies surfing EV mania--have driven 330,000 miles in Edison’s test fleet.

“GM’s Impact obviously is the dream car,” says Wehrey. It is light and small with a range of 100 miles, well within the demands of more than 80% of commuters. It sprints to 60 m.p.h. in eight seconds, has a top speed of 75 m.p.h. and can be fully charged in three hours. “Impact is well within our parameters and was built from the ground up as an electric car . . . not as a conversion of an existing gasoline-powered vehicle.

“Like the (built-from-scratch) Horlacher from Switzerland, it’s very light, very attractive and with a different shape. Almost like a disposable vehicle with sealed batteries.”

Wehrey’s World is a spotless laboratory-cum-garage where lead acid goes against nickel cadmium, and sodium sulfur opposes nickel iron in an endless battle of batteries aimed at teasing and squeezing the last yard of range and the last ounce of speed from the least expensive unit.

And within these white walls--where Edison spends $6 million annually to ease America into accepting its largest appliance since central air--electric vehicles are no longer mere possibilities. They are considered inevitable.

“Performance is definitely improving,” explains Wehrey. “Prices will go down from prototypes costing $100,000 to production vehicles of between $15,000 and $35,000.

“Batteries are improving . . . their cost, life, replacement time and performance. Of course, battery science is not a quantum science, but obviously a lot of progress has been made and I see that progress continuing.”

Hardening of the technology, says Wittenberg, a commissioner for the Los Angeles County Energy Commission and a board member with the Electric Vehicle Assn. of the Americas, has also brought a realignment of the public’s view of electric vehicles.

“There is a realization that (personal) range needs aren’t what people thought they are,” she explains. “Also that this is not just another way of recycling trees as a contribution to county and state.”

So electric vehicles, she says, are being viewed anew as “a normal, viable, marketplace choice . . . not as a replacement for the internal combustion engine, but as a major part of the long-term (transportation) future.

“The bottom line is, people like them.”

Maybe, says Wittenberg, a confessed electric-vehicle missionary and cheerleader, people are drawn to them as they once fell in love with snub-ugly Volkswagen Bugs. Their small size and large statement are very appealing. So is the Zen of silent travel.

“There’s definitely some form of sex appeal and that’s an encouraging sign,” she adds. “Maybe it’s the Flash Gordon appeal of futuristic EVs. Or just that they’re cool.”

Wehrey believes some acceptance will be rooted in the mercenary. For how appealing is ownership of an electric car if buyers are given preferential parking, are allowed to use car-pool lanes and receive dispensation to drive at 65 m.p.h.?

Yet Wehrey’s work has not been total absorption with the sober and significant. In the process of testing, he has seen batteries blow up and control boxes melt down. There have been back-to-the-future inventors pushing batteries that used human urine as electrolytes, electric buses that theoretically could ride on air cushions and cars mounted with wind generators.

Then there was the person with the ultimate answer to all energy problems: Equip an electric car with a generator so it could charge its own batteries as it went along.

“You try to be very polite,” he says. “You explain that perpetual motion doesn’t exist. Then they call the chairman of the board.”