Electric Los Angeles
Two thousand seven is the year the electric car (one you can own) returns to Los Angeles. And they are here to stay. The 1990s early examples of electric cars -- the GM EV1, Toyota RAV4 Electric and the Honda EV -- died when California relaxed its requirements for all manufactures to offer ZEV cars. Those cars weren't ready for prime time. But all that is changing in 2007.
Already open in Glendale is Environmental Motors with its new showroom at 134 S Glendale Ave, next to Colonial Honda -- one of the first Honda dealers in the USA. Environmental M
otors [http://www.environmentalmotors.com/] is a franchise for Zap Automotive. [http://www.environmentalmotors.com/] It sells Zap's quirky lines of electric vehicles like the Xebra three-wheel Zaptruck and the Zenn low-speed sedan. Also on sale are several 2005 Smart ForTwo city cars that have been Americanized for astronomical prices.
I went to Environmental Motors a couple weeks ago to check it out. The Smart cars were stickered at whopping prices like $26-28,000. That same day I drove the new Smart ForTwo which will be in full US spec, on sale new, in January 2007 for half that price! There is only a short window -- about 7 months -- in which Zap will be able to unload its overpriced Smart cars here on unsuspecting customers who just have to have a gray market ForTwo before the official 2008 model goes on sale in the US. If someone pays those high prices now just to get better fuel economy, they are going to be pretty unhappy come January 2008 when they realize they really overpaid for a small gray-market car.
The little electric three-wheel cars, sold as "motorcycles", are a cute but not very practical as they have short ranges and really can't keep up with traffic on the freeways. They are better for running around a large estate like a golf cart. The Zenn electric cars, made in Canada, are also for surface street and golf courses. I fear that some new "green" owners of these vehicles will think they can drive in normal LA traffic without any adverse impact to other motorists. I sure hope I don't get stuck behind one of these cars on Laurel Canyon one day.
If the expensive "golf carts" aren't your thing, EM has electric scooters and in the next several months, it will have more of the quirky electric cars from Zap. Check out Zap's website for more of what's to come.
If you want a "real" electric car, the wait is almost over. Tesla Motors, Inc. will open its first store anywhere right here in LA on Santa Monica Blvd near the 405 Freeway this November. Tesla says they will begin deliveries in February 2008. Alan wrote about the Tesla back in December 2006. I have some updated news for those of you interested in this new brand and breed of electric cars.
If you want to be one of the first owners of the Tesla Roadster, basically a highly sophisticated electrified Lotus Elise, get in line and bring your checkbook. The Tesla Roadster is fun and fast and expensive -- $98,000 plus tax and license! If you hurry, you can still pre-order the Roadster at its "old" price of $92, 000 -- but you need to do it by June 15. San Carlos-based Tesla plans on building 1,200 Roadsters in its first years and it already has orders for 400. They expect to have most of the first year production pre-sold by the end of this year.
Now, this is LA and there is a market for a $100k electric car. It's definitely not a practical car as it has only two seats and almost zero storage space. But if you want real green credentials, give the Prius to the maid and buy the Tesla for your red carpet appearances. It's much sexier -- it is a Lotus Elise body -- and you can drive like a bat-out-of-hell with a 0-60 mph time of less that 4 seconds and a top speed of around 130 mph. Tesla uses lithium-ion battery technology -- something GM is keen on using in its upcoming Chevrolet Volt; however the Volt will have an onboard gasoline motor to recharge the batteries which will give the Volt a much greater driving range with very low carbon emissions. The Tesla is plug and drive only.
Tesla Motors is backed by some big-name Silicon Valley names including Elon Musk, a co-founder of PayPal Inc. (now part of eBay) and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. When you have the Google guys investing in your company, you should be comforted in knowing that you have some of the most creative, intelligent and flat-out rich people in the world who believe in your products.
Tesla can't possibly be making a dime on any of the first 1200 Tesla roadsters. Even at $98,000 each, sales of $117,600,000 isn't enough to pay back either the research and development costs or the heavy capital investment needed for tooling, parts and labor 
in the automotive industry. Tesla's Electronic Storage System (ESS) is the key innovation that powers the Tesla Roadster. The lithium-ion battery pack is heavy, sophisticated and every expensive. The Tesla Roadster is built for Tesla by Lotus in the UK. That's expensive!
And Tesla is building its own unique dealership network -- there will be no franchises. Building company-owned stores is very nice, but very expensive. The first-tier prime market cities behind Los Angeles are: San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Miami. Second tier markets are: San Diego, Seattle and Denver. What, nothing in Texas??
Tesla doesn't want customers to have the "old" internal combustion sales experience. The stereo-typical car sales person is on the bottom of the trust list -- just one notch above politicians. Tesla hopes its customers will have a new, 21st Century sales and service experience. I don't have a clue what that means -- at least they are shooting high.
I'm also glad to see that the Tesla Roadster is going to be a real-world usable daily driver. The option list, while short, makes for a comfy cabin:
- Two-tone premium interior, $1,800
- Touch-screen navigation system with voice guidance, $1,200
- Bluetooth cellular phone integration, $100
- XM Satellite Radio, $400
- Seven-speaker premium sound system tuned for the Roadster, $800
- Tesla Motors custom floor mats, $125
- Mobile charging system (allows you to charge anywhere @110 volts), $350
- Matching body-colored carbon fiber hardtop with full headliner, $3,200
I'd skip the pricy carbon fiber hardtop and pop for the other creature comforts. Sure, it adds another $4,475, but that's chump change in a car with a MSRP of $98,000.
The Tesla Roadster isn't really meant to be a profit machine; it's a halo car that will attract people to the new brand as well as make "green" driving sexy. Tesla already has plans for a sedan code-named WhiteStar. The WhiteStar will be a bit less performance-oriented and more consumer friendly with room for at least four people and a longer range per charge. The target price for the WhiteStar is around $50,000, which puts it squarely in the mid-priced luxury sedan range.
Fever is building in LA for any kind of alternative, greener, more fuel efficient transportation. The Toyota Prius is ubiquitous here. If I hear another friend ask me about a Prius, I'm going scream. I keep telling people to wait for clean diesel technology to get here but some people won't wait. They just want to do something for the environment. You can't convince people that the Prius isn't the way to carbon dioxide-free driving. In fact, Toyota is heavily promoting the Prius and the marketing is working. Last month (May 2007), the Toyota Prius was the ninth most popular car in the US with sales of 24,009 -- an increase of 184.9%! While California accounts for a big chunk of those sales, the fact that the Prius cracked the top 10 for the first time is a sign that the Prius brand and what Toyota tells you it stands for, is catching on across the country.
Toyota is keen at giving the public what they want when they want it. The Los Angeles demand for something new, something green is overwhelming -- at all levels of car buyers. It's not just the rich Hollywood elite that need to show their green credentials in public; it's the average every day commuter who can afford a Honda Civic Hybrid or even a discounted Prius.
I'm positive that the next-generation Prius, due anytime now, will be a plug and drive model. Toyota owns its own battery company and you can be sure that the next Prius will have a plug-in component and the ability to drive on battery power alone for some distance. We might even see a new Prius appear at the Detroit or LA Auto Show at the end of this year.
While the streets of LA won't be teeming with electric cars in 2007, this is the year that consumers will get their chance to bite into the first batch of strange offerings from Zap to be followed by the Tesla and then who knows what from Toyota. Hey, maybe Honda will show us a fuel cell car we can buy -- but that may not be for a couple more years. If you do get a Tesla, both Alan and I would like to take it for a test drive. Write us!
