Alternative Vehicles Showcase AltCar Expo Opens With a Screech
By John O'Dell September 26, 2008
The parking lot of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium was jammed with environmentally friendly vehicles during lunch hour Thursday, but the sounds and smells were more suited for a darkened stretch of road in the San Fernando Valley on a Friday night as the screech of spinning tires and the smell of burning rubber wafted over us.
"Short of putting grippier tires on it, there's not a lot you can do," said Owen Emry, senior firmware engineer of electric drivetrain maker AC Propulsion
, as reporters unaccustomed to the added torque of the electric vehicles to be featured at AltCar Expo 2008
regularly broke loose the tires of the cars they were sampling.
About a dozen of the 100 or so vehicles being featured at the public event from 10 a.m.to 5 p.m. today and Friday were were on display to the media Thursday as advanced-technology car-, truck- and drivetrain makers prepared to show off their products and prototypes.
AltCar, which is in its third year and is one of the nation's premier showcases for alternatives to the conventional gasoline-burning automobile
The previewed vehicles ranged from a battery-powered, three-wheeled, stand-up people mover -- think Segway with a front wheel and handlebars -- used for security and events management to a Porsche Boxster retrofitted to run on tanks filled with compressed air.
The vehicle makers will pitch their goods to the 10,000 people estimated to show up for the event, which will also include a panel on climate change and a symposium on the future of mass transit.
"Fuel costs are going up, and if we look at production resources, they're finite," said Glenn Bell, chief executive officer of AirFuelAuto
.
The Fremont, California-based company's Boxster is powered by air compressed to 2,200 pounds per square inch, or about 50 times a typical car tire's air pressure. It allows the two-seat convertible to run at 65 miles per hour for about 50 miles.
The event takes place this year under U.S. economic conditions that may either help or hinder the development and financing of such vehicles.
While rising gas prices shorten the amount of time it takes to earn back the extra cost of such vehicles through fuel savings, Wall Street's financial crisis and a possible $700 billion government bail out may shrink federal funding and tax breaks that most alternative vehicle backers insist are critical to getting their products into the mainstream.
The potential loss of a big tax break doesn't worry Tedd Abramson, though. His Southern California-based Electrorides
is showcasing its ZeroTruck at AltCar.
It's an Isuzu utility truck retrofitted with a battery-electric drive system that can run for as long as 80 miles before recharging and provides about 400 pound-feet of torque.
While Abramson hopes the truck's $130,000 pricetag will be partially offset with tax incentives worth about $20,000, he's confident that Electrorides will succeed even without government help. "We built this to stand alone without the incentives," he said.
Most of the vehicles shown Thursday were battery powered and targeted at business and governmet fleetsd that can afford the often-expensive conversions because of of government tax breaks and cumullative fuel and maintenance savings.
While the companies welcome, even lust for, retail buyers, their vehicles are largely out of the reach of many.
AC Propulsion, the 16-year-old company founded by engineer Alan Cocconi, who developed the drivetrain for GM's late and often lamented EV-1, is showing off its drivetrains by featuring retrofitted Toyota Scions that zip from 0-60 miles per hour in about seven seconds and can run for 120 miles without recharging.
The look good and drive well, but unless demand triggers mass production and resulting economiesof scale that can lower component costs, AC must charge a hefty $55,000 to covert a Scion Xb into a battery-electric AC Propulsion "eBox." That's three to four times the $13,000-$18,000 purchase price of the base Scion.
Still, AC Propulsion's Emery - an admitted battery guy -- said that while fuel-cell electric systems the use compressed hydrogen gas are still being developed and have an uncertian future, battery electric drivetrains are ready to go.
The viability of each technology has been at the root of a longstanding argument between fuel cell and battery proponents and the preponderance of battery electric vehicles at AltCar seems to put this event squarely in the battery camp.
"If you want to lose money building fuel-cell prototypes, maybe you'll get tax breaks. This is technology we can build, ship and sell profitably today," Emery said of his company's Scion conversions. "This is a great car for most people most of the time."
If they can afford it.
At the other end of the spectrum, T3 Motion
, which filed to go public earlier this year, was displaying the $8,000 - $10,000 three-wheeled electric people movers it has sold to more than 400 North American school and business campuses, events operators and police and other government agencies since 2006.
The stand-up vehicles have cut operating expenses for the parking patrol at Torrance, Calif.'s Del Amo Fashion Center from the $62 a day in gas it was paying to keep its Ford Escape patrol units rolling to about 40-cents worth of power required to recharge the three-wheelers' batteries, according to Jeff Simpson, T3's marketing manager.
After its two-day run at the Santa Monica city auditorium, AltCar Expo will for the first time move to a second venue, in Austin, Texas,.
The event will be held Oct. 17-18 at the alternative transportation-conscious city's Palmer Events Center.
Danny King, Contributor
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