Electric Bus Contracts Shuttle in New Era

Southern California’s long dream of being the launch pad for nonpolluting cars and buses is getting a jump start from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which is giving out contracts for electric buses, and from the bold efforts of entrepreneur Anders Eklov, who has revived an electric bus company in Downey.

Ebus Inc. is building 18 electric shuttle buses for the DWP, under marching orders to have them ready for the U.S. League of Cities convention this November in Los Angeles.

The DWP has bigger plans, to give an order for full-sized transit buses powered by electricity and natural gas turbine generators in time for next year’s Democratic National Convention. Its intention is to promote the use of electricity in vehicles, says Scott Briasco, manager of electric transportation for the municipal utility.

The real value of the DWP’s move is that it is giving bona fide production contracts for vehicles that will be competitive in cost with diesel buses in use today. It is not a demonstration project. After their convention debut, the new buses will be employed at specialty locations such as San Pedro’s Ports O’ Call and Cal State Northridge or in full transit use by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Companies such as Capstone Turbine in Woodland Hills, Aerovironment in Monrovia, El Dorado National--a bus maker in Chino--ISE Research in San Diego and U.S. Electric Motor in Torrance will benefit from this new surge of activity.

But Ebus is a particularly interesting success story because it would be closed by now, its work moved to Indiana, were it not for the vision and investment of Eklov, who made one fortune with his own software company in the 1970s and now is intent on building a pioneer in hybrid electric-gas turbine buses.

“I can see hybrid buses as the dominant form in 10 years time,” says Eklov, 55, a mechanical engineer who came to California from Sweden 34 years ago.

In a sense, the automotive business has been Eklov’s game from the start. In 1970, he went to work for Olivetti of America, selling programmable calculators--then 75-pound, $4,000 items--for use by auto dealers who needed to figure out sales contracts quickly.

Eklov then developed a computer software and hardware system for auto contracts and founded Oakleaf Corp. (oak leaf in Swedish is eklov), in 1974. He built Chatsworth-based Oakleaf into a nationwide success with $26 million annual sales by 1987, when he sold the company to Convergent Technologies (later Unisys) for what he terms “a satisfactory price.”

Then 44 years old and rich, Eklov invested with engineers and venture capitalists Harold and Ben Rosen in their company, Capstone Turbine, which was developing a design by local auto engineers for a turbogenerator that could be used in a hybrid electric vehicle.

Eklov’s interest in such concepts was further piqued a few years ago by an electric shuttle bus he rode on a visit to Yosemite National Park. He contacted Specialty Vehicles Manufacturing Co. of Downey, which had built the Yosemite bus under a federal grant. But SVMC had been bought by Electric Vehicles International, an Anderson, Ind., firm led by former General Motors executives whose aim was to produce buses in Indiana, not California.

So Eklov invested in EVI, bought manufacturing rights to its bus and leased the 52,000-square-foot factory. Then he hired the 30 local employees and started work under the Ebus name to develop a hybrid vehicle. His investment to date is roughly $4 million.

The business belongs in Southern California, Eklov says, because “the work force that knows what it’s doing is here, the engineering staff with the know-how are here.

“And the suppliers are here,” he says, ticking off Capstone and Aerovironment, which contributes its invention, a fast-charge device that allows a bus to recharge in an hour instead of overnight.

Eklov and his Ebus engineers were prepared to experiment for a year with a hybrid bus, but the DWP came along with a $4.3-million contract for 18 electric buses.

The DWP job came about because of feisty David Freeman, head of the DWP, who was roused by a court’s order to the MTA to buy buses powered by compressed natural gas to solve environmental problems. “Why not electric?” asked Freeman, and he set out to demonstrate that electric vehicles could work.

“If compressed natural gas buses cut emissions in half, electric and hybrid buses reduce them by a factor of 10,” Eklov says.

So now Ebus is working hard to meet production schedules. The company has expanded to 50 employees and Eklov, who serves as chairman, has hired William Webster from Aerovironment as president to run operations.

The DWP request for hybrid buses is slated to go out later this month, but Ebus, with its plate filled, won’t be in on the new order initially. Instead, San Diego-based ISE Research will work with Chino’s El Dorado National, which has an existing bus design that can be adapted.

Eklov sees the hybrid as the ultimate solution. “Electric vehicles’ problem is range,” he notes. Ebus shuttles can go 60 miles before recharging, and the Aerovironment fast-charge device effectively doubles that range to 120 miles a day. But hybrid buses, using microturbines as power sources, open up full transit capabilities. They’re the future, Eklov says.

But are they? Numerous Southern California organizations, from CalStart to Edison International to the Air Resources Board have sponsored electric vehicle projects over the decades with little to show. Why will the future be different?

Because the research has succeeded. Production contracts are being handed out for low-emission vehicles, entrepreneurs see a payoff from investments in them and Democratic political candidates will note with pride next year that they are being ferried around Los Angeles in electric buses. Once again the trend starts here.

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James Flanigan can be reached by e-mail at jim.flanigan@latimes.com.