SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2010
KLMNO
EZ SU
Politics & The Nation
Improvements in battery technology contribute to trend
BY JERRY HIRSCH AND TIFFANY HSU
los angeles — Stalled for nearly a century, electric cars are poised to enter a new era when the first of a new generation of vehicles reaches dealer show- rooms nextmonth. Every major automaker plans
some sort of electric or plug-in hybrid offering over the next several years, a wave of compet- ing technologies reminiscent of the beginning of the automobile age. General Motors this month
will start shipping its Chevrolet Volt, which uses a gas engine to generate electricity when the batteries run out. It will be available for sale in California in December. By year’s end, Nissan Motorwill launch its Leaf,which is powered only by batteries. Ford will come out with an all-electric version of its Focus compact car next year. “Electric vehicles are finally
real and not an R&D project,” saidMark Sogomian, a partner at Ernst & Young. Many of the new-generation
electric vehicles are on display at the Los Angeles Auto Show, which runs through Sunday.Oth- er alternative-fuel vehicles, such as Honda’s hydrogen-powered FCX Clarity, also are being show- cased. This influx of new-technology
cars comes after a century of reliance on gasoline combustion engine vehicles. More than a century ago, cars
ran on all kinds of fuels and strange mechanisms: wind-up cars on giant springs, Peugeots burning something similar to mothballs, and vehicles on steam, electricity and a variety of petroleumproducts. Fossil fuels eventually won
that race because gasoline was stuffed with energy and was convenient to transport and store. Still, everyone from garage
tinkerers to automakers has toyed with electric cars in recent decades, particularly during times of high gas prices. But those vehicles never caught on because battery technology lim- ited the range of the cars and oil prices always receded, making electric cars comparatively too expensive. Now, improvements in battery
technology, pollution concerns and fears of soaring gas prices have given new impetus to alter- native-fuel vehicles. In the coming months, con-
sumers will have to start doing more than just deciding whether theywant a sedan or a sport-util- ity vehicle. They will have to consider for
the first time how they want their new car powered, and that will create new questions: What’s less expensive permile— gasoline or electricity? How far can I go on a charge? How much morewill it costme to purchase a green car? “The rules are changing, and
in a way everything is up in the air again, just like it was more than 100 years ago,” said Leslie Kendall, curator of the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los An- geles. The eco-friendly profile is
enough to persuade Barbara Odza, a graphic designer from West Los Angeles, to make the switch from gasoline to electric. She is buying a blackNissan Leaf for about $20,000 after federal and state tax incentives, and expects to get the car in January. The cost of the charger and its
home installation, along with a portable quick-charger unit for faster powering, could add $3,700 to the price tag. But out-of-pocket costs could actual- ly be more like $1,000 after various government credits and other incentive programs, she estimates. “I’ve been waiting for a long
time for someone to develop an electric vehicle that an average person can use every day as a commuter car,” Odza said. “It’s the right direction to go for the environment and the economy.” Driving the Leaf will take
more effort than the Volvo C30 she is giving up. When you “get off the freeway, there’s gasoline available all over the place. You
don’t have to be as meticulous with the planning as you do with the electric vehicle, where the infrastructure doesn’t yet exist.” Because it relies solely on
battery power, the Leaf has a range limited to about 100 miles — maybe more if driven conser- vatively in cool weather and definitely less if the engine is revved up with the air condition- ing running on a hot day. The Volt can go a lot farther, primarily because it is technical-
ly a hybrid rather than a pure electric vehicle. It goes about 40 miles on a single charge. When the juice runs out, a four-cylin- der gas engine kicks in as a generator and powers the elec- tric drive train, extending the car’s range by about 300miles. The Volt will start at $41,000.
The similar-size Chevrolet Cruze LTZ sedan with an automatic transmission, navigation and other bells and whistles is about $26,000.
Nissan’s Leaf hatchback starts
at $32,780. A similarly equipped conventional gasoline Versa hatchback from Nissan starts at less than $17,000. A $7,500 federal tax credit
designed to accelerate entry of electric vehicles into themarket- place will reduce the cost of both vehicles. Owners will get some of the
money back in savings through lower maintenance and operat- ing fees. Nissan says its Leaf will
cost about $440 to maintain for the first three years. That would be about a third of what owners would pay tomaintain a similar- size, gasoline-powered Versa. Much of the savings comes from not having to do oil changes. Savings fromthe Volt will be less — just a few hundred dollars below the roughly $1,600 a driv- er would spend to maintain Chevrolet’s compact Cruze sedan over a five-year period, according to IntelliChoice, an auto infor-
A7 Major automakers zipping electric cars into showrooms soon
mation company. It’s going to take time, but the
era of gasoline combustion en- gines is starting to end, said former race car driver Al Unser Jr., who now works with Zap, a Santa Rosa, Calif., electric vehi- cles company. “Eventually there will be a
timewhen the electric or alterna- tive-fuels car will bemainstream and what you are driving today will be in amuseum,” he said. — Los Angeles Times
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