Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 17, 1991 TAG: 9104170478
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Salem GE will be a major subcontractor in the design of electric cars for Ford Motor Co. It will design the power train that feeds voltage from an array of batteries to the wheels of Ford's prototype, tentatively dubbed the Aerostar. The automaker has said as many as 100 of the vehicles will be built by 1993 for testing in Europe and the United States. Then would come mass production.
General Motors already has announced it will build its Impact electric in Lansing, Mich., and that they may be coming off the assembly line in five years. The Impact is a sleek sportster that can accelerate from zero to 60 mph in eight seconds. On electricity it gets the equivalent of 86 miles per gallon.
Chrysler has the TEVan, which it hopes to sell in the mid-1990s. A number of foreign makers have built or are designing electrics.
It's a research-and-development basic, but there's a more immediate incentive. California, with some of the worst air-pollution problems in the land, has enacted a law requiring that in 1998, 2 percent of autos sold in the state have zero tailpipe emissions; by 2003, 10 percent. That's a big market, with 2 million vehicles sold annually, and the trend is likely to spread to other states.
It can't be said that electrics make no contribution to pollution: For recharging, their batteries are plugged into current generated mostly by coal-fired utility plants. Those facilities, however, are not in the heart of urban areas, and they are more efficient than wasteful gas-powered autos.
More to the point are the practical drawbacks to current electric models. They run on heavy batteries that take up a lot of room in the vehicle; the batteries must regularly be recharged, which limits range (125 miles for the Impact between recharges); and the batteries' life is limited - after 25,000 or so miles they must be replaced, at significant cost.
Technological advances will ease those shortcomings. But the biggest barrier to electrics, for now, is economic. General Motors has said it needs to sell 250,000 or more electrics a year to justify production of the Impact. It can hardly expect such volume as long as oil is so cheap. The gasoline-powered automobile will retain the advantage, operating at about half the fuel cost of an electric.
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-9th, has introduced legislation aimed at helping both the environment and coal mining: It would require that owners of fleets of 20 or more vehicles substitute electrics for at least 10 percent of their new-vehicle purchases. It would take effect when electrics are comparable to conventional vehicles in price, acceleration and range.
But ordering production or purchases is not a good way to create a market. Economic forces are more reliable. Thus, if gasoline cost more, America's inventive muscle would be harnessed, more electric cars would be bought and produced, and their cost and price would come down more quickly.
The easiest and best way to make gasoline cost more is to tax it more heavily. A hefty gas tax not only would help wean America from its addiction to foreign oil and reflect more closely the gas-run vehicles' true pollution and health costs. The gas tax not only would help preserve the environment and bring needed revenue into a deficit-dominated U.S. treasury.
It also would stimulate investment in alternative fuels and, incidentally, might fuel extra business for GE Drive Systems in Salem. We can have those snappy, quiet, high-performance electrics sooner, but there is a price.
by CNB