All Charged Up : EV1 Is a Gas, Say First Users--but There Are a Few Shocks

The EV1 electric car’s good points, three of its lessees say, are that it is an environmental and engineering marvel--quieter, cleaner and sportier than they expected--and that it attracts all kinds of attention.

Their complaints? The car doesn’t get the mileage per charge advertised, it is woefully short of compartment space and other amenities commensurate with its $34,000 price tag--and it attracts all kinds of attention.

Three weeks after taking delivery of General Motors’ new electric car, three Southland residents who are now regularly using the EV1--all pioneers on the zero-emissions vehicle frontier--said the car’s pluses outweigh the minuses.

But Ed Hasselmann of Solana Beach, Charles McCollister of Simi Valley and John Cox of Newport Beach each voiced ambivalence about their newfound celebrity, even as they enthused about the fun of driving the EV1 with its sports car-like acceleration and handling.

Cox constantly gets thumbs-up gestures from other motorists: “It’s like they’re saying, ‘Way to go!’ for driving a clean car.” Hasselmann said the constant stares from other drivers mean they are paying more attention to him than to the road. He fears one may run into him at some point.

After McCollister ran out of juice on Interstate 110 last week, attracting gawkers, radio reporters and even a cable TV crew, he said: “Everyone seemed to be having a ball except me.”

Over the next year, The Times will check in periodically with the trio and other lessees (54 Southern Californians and Arizonans have leased the cars so far) to see how the EV1 is performing. Leasing is the only option; GM is not selling the cars outright.

So far, the reports are positive. “Everyone who rides in it is surprised about the get-up-and-go,” said Hasselmann, 61, an inventor, entrepreneur and former U.S. Air Force scientist who invented solar panels used in one of NASA’s space missions. “They cost a lot less than a Ferrari, and I’m having just as much fun.”

The EV1 lessees say they feel a sense of superiority as they pass motorists feeding gas guzzlers at service stations, knowing their cars cost about one-third as much per mile to fuel electrically.

But instead of 70 to 90 miles per charge as billed by GM, two lessees are averaging 55 miles of range, and McCollister complains of even less--about 45 miles per charge. That means he can’t use the car as he had planned, to commute from Simi Valley to downtown Los Angeles, a 60-mile trip.

“The power is there, but you just don’t get much of it. You have to use it sparingly,” said McCollister, 57, an airline flight attendant who said he will ask GM to fix the charging system or exchange the car after the holidays.

EV1 specialist Gordon Byrne, one of a dozen special electric car salesmen that GM trained and stationed at Southern California and Arizona Saturn dealerships where EV1s are leased and serviced, stood by the manufacturer’s claim of 70 to 90 miles per charge.

“The mileage depends on your driving habits: If you drive aggressively, whether you’re going up hills, down hills, how you’re getting from A to B, whether you stick your foot in it. Make sense?” Byrne said.

For Cox, a marketing executive who was formerly a Newport Beach mayor, leasing the EV1 fits his persona of consumer pioneer. He was among the first in his set to own a satellite TV dish, a high-powered home computer and a cellular telephone, he said. Riding in the car is like being in a space capsule. “It’s sort of bubblelike,” he said admiringly.

But Cox, whose other car is a Lexus, groused that the EV1 is short of compartments and that the upholstery is on the chintzy side for its price range, and that the lack of charging facilities leaves him fretting about running out of juice.

“If you drive no more than 40 miles a day max, then this car really works for you,” Cox said. “But there is no glove compartment, no console compartment, and the upholstery does not have the luxury you should find. When you’re used to the creature comforts, you notice when they’re not there.”

Each complained about the car’s range, due partly to the lead acid batteries’ limited capacity and also to the lack of public chargers. Except for Saturn dealerships, only eight public charging stations are now open in the Southland, although 150 may be installed at shopping malls and public venues over the next year. Longer-lasting nickel metal batteries are expected on the market within two years.

For now, lessees have to rely on home chargers mounted in their garages, costing about $2,500 to wire and install. A full charge takes three hours.

“I do have to watch it, how far I drive. I can’t make 10 little trips a day with it. And there isn’t much room. I have two granddaughters, and I can’t take them out for a ride at the same time,” said Hasselmann.

Cox said he was learning how to coax maximum mileage from a charge. “It uses a lot more energy in acceleration and going up hills than a conventional car. If you aren’t careful you use far too much fuel and you’re in trouble, because once you are out of fuel you don’t have any choice but to get towed in,” Cox said. GM gives lessees free roadside service.

But each of the EV1 lessees said the car overall was living up to their expectations. Hasselmann enjoys stepping on the, er, electricity, and throwing passengers back against their seats. McCollister, a self-described environmentalist, said he has always wanted to own a nonpolluting electric car.

“I’ve waited until now because the ones available previously were Mickey Mouse, impractical, and they had no backing of a major company behind them.” Was the EV1 worth the wait? “I really love the car. But maybe GM could slip me another one off the production line,” McCollister said.

For Hasselmann, a mechanical engineer with a degree from MIT, his expectations were grounded in careful scientific and mathematical calculations about how much fuel consumption and pollution he would save. To get his dander up, just accuse him of having leased the car as a plaything.

“People say, ‘Oh, it’s a toy to you,’ but it isn’t. It met my criteria. I wanted a sports car, and it’s a peppy car. It went along with my philosophy on the environment because I’m saving 100 pounds of emissions a year. And I’ve cut my fuel bill by more than half,” Hasselmann said.

It gratifies him to work out the figures on how much smog would be saved if more drivers went electric. He figures that if 50,000 San Diego County commuters drove electric vehicles, annual fuel savings would equal 600,000 barrels per year of crude oil.

“If that many people would get this car, we could save an Exxon Valdez tanker’s worth of oil a year,” Hasselmann said.

Although he drives a car that could someday make gas stations extinct, Hasselmann ironically made his living from gas stations for 20 years, founding a San Diego company called Hasstech in 1974 that built the first gas pump nozzle to capture and recycle gasoline vapors. He sold Hasstech in 1995 to OPW, the nation’s largest manufacturer of gasoline pump nozzles.