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Danny Epp of the Dynasty Electric Car Corporation sighs as he stares out the window of his Tsawwassen home. Parked on his driveway are seven cars that were built right here in B.C., but that can't be sold in this province. Red, blue, silver, orange, yellow and white, the four-door sedans are about the size and shape of a Volkswagen Beetle, and have a classic VW's minimalist approach to interior trim.
Had things gone differently, these electric-powered "IT" cars might have become the next "people's car" here in B.C. But thanks to legislation passed recently in this province, this zero-emission vehicle can only be driven on roads with a posted speed limit of 40 kilometres per hour--which rules out almost every stretch of asphalt in the province, aside from school or playground zones, and private roads inside gated communities.
A hundred years ago, electric vehicles freely roamed B.C. roads alongside their gas-powered cousins. They were popular, albeit expensive modes of transport, but they were eventually done in by technological advances to the internal combustion engine and cheap gas.
This time around, legislation did them in.
For Epp it's a case of a lost opportunity. It's also a loss to this province. As of last year, the IT electric vehicle is no longer made in B.C. The right to manufacture it has been sold to a company in Pakistan.
The saga of the IT began in 1998, when employees of the truck manufacturing company Western Star, based in Kelowna, started up a dealership to sell the Chrysler-built GEM electric car.
When Western Star was purchased by Freightliner of Portland in 2000, a group of employees who didn't want to move south of the border decided to design and build their own electric car--the Innovative Technology, or IT.
"They decided they could build a better mousetrap," says Epp, who describes the GEM as a "open, big ugly golf cart with virtually no doors." He added, "They wanted to develop more of a city car."
Dynasty Motor Car Corporation set up a 32,000-square-foot factory in Kelowna in 2000. The first ITs rolled off the production line in 2001. At first, everything looked rosy. California had mandated that 10 per cent of all vehicles sold in that state had to be zero-emission by 2003. Dynasty anticipated being able to produce and sell 10,000 IT cars annually.
Then in 2002, General Motors and Daimler-Chrysler, backed by the U.S. federal government, sued California, forcing the state to back down. Dynasty's business plan "fell apart" at that point, says Epp. The company went into bankruptcy. It was later sold, renamed Dynasty Electric Car Corporation, and relocated by its new owners to a smaller facility on Annacis Island in Delta. Production was scaled back to 50 or 60 cars per year.
As recently as last year, it was still possible to purchase an IT--which had a list price of $10,000 to $15,000--and drive it on B.C.'s roads, as long as you didn't venture onto a highway.
Because the IT hadn't been crash tested, it was limited by Transport Canada regulations to a top speed of 40 kilometres per hour--even though the car is capable of closer to 70 kilometres per hour, in models equipped with an AC motor. The top speed was tweaked by adjusting the controller--a simple software adjustment--so the IT couldn't go any faster than 40 km/h. This enabled it to be classified by Transport Canada as a "low speed vehicle" that could be insured and driven--albeit only on roads where the speed limit was 60 km/h or less.
Despite its low top speed and 50-kilometre range, the car attracted buyers. Epp says he still receives about a dozen calls each day from people who want to buy an IT. But even though the cars on his driveway are going for the fire-sale price of $12,000, local buyers suddenly lose interest when told about the restrictions imposed by the legislation here in B.C.
In August, the B.C. government amended the Motor Vehicle Act to limit low-speed vehicles like the IT to roads with a posted speed limit of 40 km/h or less. The amendment allows individual municipalities to pass bylaws allowing low-speed vehicles on roads with a 50 km/h speed limit within their jurisdictions, but so far only Oak Bay has done so. For low-speed vehicles to venture outside Oak Bay, other Victoria suburbs would have to follow suit.
Here in Vancouver, where the typical commuter crosses at least one municipal boundary, potential buyers of the IT would need to do a lot of lobbying to get each of the municipalities they pass through on their daily commutes to adopt similar bylaws. Even if they were successful, a low-speed vehicle like the IT wouldn't be allowed on bridges, which typically have a posted speed limit of 60 km/h.
"For all intents and purposes, they've taken these vehicles off the public roadway system," says Epp.
Meanwhile, south of the border, Washington State last year created a new category of vehicle: the "medium-speed electric vehicle." Defined as a vehicle with a top speed of 30 miles per hour (50 km/h), the medium-speed vehicle can be operated on roads with a maximum posted speed limit of 35 miles per hour (about 56 km/h). Montana has followed suit.
"Their rationale is safety," says Epp. "They don't want the vehicle impeding traffic."
In Canada, the federal government in 2007 began offering a $1,000 to $2,000 rebate to those who purchased or leased "fuel efficient" vehicles--typically four-cylinder gas-engine cars or gas-electric hybrids. The B.C. government offers a matching provincial sales tax rebate of $1,000 to $2,000 to those who buy or lease "conventional fuel-efficient vehicles" that qualify for Transport Canada's ecoAUTO Rebate Program. But here's the catch: low-speed electric vehicles don't qualify for either ecoAUTO or the provincial tax rebate, because they can't be licensed to travel on highways.
This means that buying a gas-engine, American-built Jeep Patriot SUV will earn a $1,000 ecoAUTO rebate and a $1,000 point-of-sale reduction on the B.C. sales tax, but the purchase of a zero-emission, Canadian-built IT doesn't qualify for a dime of rebate.
Epp finds disqualification from the ecoAUTO Rebate Program ironic.
"Our vehicle [doesn't just offer] a slight reduction in emission--it's a zero-emission vehicle, and for urban driving. And here we've been eliminated from that program."
Had low-speed electric vehicles been included in the federal and provincial rebates, says Epp, those buying an IT might have qualified for a $4,000 rebate--quite an incentive, when considering a car whose base list price was just $10,000.
The federal government will end its ecoAUTO Rebate Program at the end of this year.
In this year's federal budget speech, Finance Minister James Flaherty announced the creation of a $250 million Automotive Innovation Fund to provide money to automotive manufacturers to help them produce "greener and more fuel-efficient vehicles."
This kind of money would have bankrolled the cost of crash-testing the IT--something Epp says would have cost "millions of dollars."
A crash-tested IT could have upped its maximum speed and become a serious contender in the commuter car market. Instead, faced with rising production costs, a lack of capital to finance a large-volume production plant, and a weaker U.S. dollar (most IT sales were to the U.S.), Dynasty Electric Car Corporation pulled the plug last year. In May, the company closed its local plant and sold its tooling, inventory, engineering drawings and intellectual property to Karachi, Pakistan-based Karakoram Motors.
If and when provincial laws ever change and British Columbians are allowed to drive the IT, they'll be buying it from Pakistan.
Who killed the B.C.-built electric car?
For Epp, the answer's an obvious one.
Epp now serves as the local representative for the IT for Karakoram Motors. He calls the sale of Dynasty "one of those sad notes in Canadian history." But he adds he's pleased the IT is going to survive, and might one day be available again to the North American market.
Of the approximately 200 IT cars ever manufactured and sold, about 30 were purchased in B.C. and 20 are still insured here. The Insurance Corporation of B.C. insures them under a grandfather clause--but only as long as they're still owned by the person who owned them prior to the August 2008 changes to B.C.'s Motor Vehicle Act.
Epps' wife is one of these drivers. She can insure her car and drive it anywhere in the Lower Mainland, as long as she stays off the highways--but if she sells her IT to someone else, they'll pretty much have to park it.
"Ever since that announcement came out from [B.C. Transportation Minister] Kevin Falcon about the new regulations, I haven't been able to sell one new vehicle in British Columbia," says Epp. "I'm forced to sell them into the U.S. market."
The IT is a strictly utilitarian vehicle with no "gee-whiz features," as Epp puts it. It has a fibreglass body over an aluminum-and-steel chassis. The car is powered by six 12-volt, deep-discharge lead-acid batteries connected in series to provide 72 volts. The estimated lifetime of the batteries is about five years; replacing them would cost between $1,500 and $2,000, says Epp. But that's still cheaper, he says, than the maintenance required by the far more complicated gas-engine or hybrid vehicle.
Best of all, the cost of recharging an electric car is about one-tenth the cost of fuelling up a gas-engine vehicle over the same distance.
Critics of the electric car point to the hybrid or the hydrogen fuel-cell car as the vehicle of the future. But Epp says hybrids aren't the way to go. With both an internal combustion engine and an electric motor, they're more complex. And they recharge by driving on gasoline, instead of plugging in to a household circuit.
"Hybrid vehicles have no better gas mileage on the highways than any other vehicle," says Epp. "They only are able to take advantage of hybrid technology within urban city driving conditions--they're only able to use the battery during all the short hops."
Epp, who worked for Ballard Power Systems in the 1980s developing fuel cells, shakes his head at the notion that hydrogen-fueled vehicles are the solution to our smog problems. Sure, they're zero-emission vehicles, he says, but the only economical way to derive hydrogen is from natural gas--hardly the answer to our dependence on fossil fuels. Producing hydrogen by using electricity to electrolyze water, he says, is "hugely inefficient."
In addition, hydrogen is a low-density gas that's difficult to store, except under high pressure or at cryogenic (extremely low) temperatures. And an infrastructure of hydrogen-dispensing "gas stations" is a long way off.
In comparison, the conventional electric outlet the IT plugs into is found in every home and business in Canada. And here in B.C., most of our electricity is derived from clean hydro-electric dams, rather than from carbon-spewing coal-fired plants.
"It's a real shame that we can't demonstrate leadership in this area to the rest of Canada," says Epp.
Ron Burton lifts the seat of the 1912 Detroit Electric, exposing the mechanical controller of the electric car. An arc has damaged one of the copper-plate contacts that govern the speed of the vehicle. He picks up the computer laptop case he uses to hold his tools and pulls out a screwdriver and a file--what he jokingly calls the "high tech tools" needed to fix the problem.
"In its time, [the Detroit Electric] was a highly advanced car," Burton says as he files a contact. "This would have been like a modern Lexus, with the latest GPS gadgetry on it--that would be equivalent to what this vehicle was."
The Detroit Electric--an early example of a zero-emission vehicle--was on display Sept. 1 at the Burnaby Village Museum, courtesy of the Vancouver Electric Vehicle Association. Visitors glancing at it often mistook the boxy black car for its carbon-spewing cousin, the Model T Ford.
In the 1890s and early 1900s, electric vehicles were more popular than gas-engine vehicles. They might have been more expensive, but they were easier to run, quieter, cleaner and more reliable. At a time when the internal combustion engine's radiator, carburetor, ignition coil and spark plugs had yet to be perfected and frequently fouled or broke down, the electric car was the better vehicle.
Trouble was, says Burton, electricity was typically available only in the big cities--and in those cities, electric streetcars were the commuting option for most average folks. On top of that, every town had its own type of electric power. Some had alternating current, some direct current.
"The grid wasn't standardized," says Burton. "If you went to another town, it could be AC or DC.
"It could be 30 hertz, it could be 60 hertz. It could be 200 volts, it could be 60 volts, it could be whatever. Each place did it their own way."
In comparison, he says, "Gasoline was everywhere. It was a waste product from kerosene production. The livery stable would have it, the general store would have it, and gas stations were popping up everywhere. Your average farm house would have a couple of gallons of it lying around, so if you were driving in the country and ran out of gas you could just buy it off your local farm."
At a time when gasoline cost five cents a gallon and electricity was 20 cents to 40 cents per kilowatt hour, the electric car cost more to operate. Even in its heyday, it was the rich person's vehicle. In 1912, a Detroit Electric cost $2,600 (or $3,210 when equipped with the optional Edison batteries), while the price of a Model T Ford was just $575.
Of the 1,241 Detroit Electrics produced in 1912, VEVA's is the only Model 31 in existence today. It was owned for decades by Florence French, who purchased it new and drove it in Victoria until the 1950s. After being displayed at Expo 86, the car was housed in the B.C. Transportation Museum, and wound up in VEVA's hands after the museum closed. The car now resides at the Power House at Stave Falls in Mission, a B.C. Hydro museum.
The car is largely original. VEVA club members have reupholstered the leather seat and repaired the roof. The car still has its original direct-drive motor--with its original brushes--and until the 1980s still had the Edison nickel-iron batteries it came with. The battery casings were leaking, although the batteries themselves were still holding a charge.
"If we could have repaired the casings, those batteries would still be working today," says Burton. "They had very durable battery technology."
The car had a range of about 80 kilometres--about as far as you'd care to go in a day, says Burton, on the potholed roads of the day. Its top speed was about 50 kilometres an hour, "which back then was awfully bloody fast," he says.
The original one-cell batteries were replaced with 16 three-cell batteries, donated by Polar Batteries, which provide 96 volts. The other concession to modern technology is under the hood: an electronic battery charger.
To engage the motor on the Detroit Electric, the driver pushes a horizontal bar, shifting the car from "N"--no power--through its five speeds. Lifting the bar before pushing it forward sends the vehicle into reverse. A second bar acts as steering tiller. Pushing the tiller turns the car right; pulling turns it left. There are two brake pedals, one for each of the brake drums on the rear wheels. A row of push-pull buttons next to the driver turn on headlights, running lights and interior lights.
In its day, the Detroit Electric was marketed as being easy to operate. The Anderson Electric Car Company--which produced the Detroit Electric from 1907 through 1939--aimed its advertising at women. The tiller required muscle to move at very slow speeds (power steering wasn't commercially available until the 1940s) but the motor started at the simple push of a lever. Gas engines, in contrast, required cranking to start--a dangerous task that could break your wrist, if the engine kicked back.
Ironically, the introduction of the electric starter in 1912 prompted the demise of electric vehicles.
"[The year] 1912 was the beginning of the end," says Burton. Although electric vehicles continued to be produced in small quantities up until the 1950s, they were "oddballs," he says.
As the gasoline engine grew in complexity, however, the electric vehicle maintained its simplicity--and its reliability. A gasoline engine has about 650 moving parts, says Burton, while an electric motor has one moving part.
"To get one moving part working well, that's pretty easy," says Burton. "[To get] 650 of them working well, all synchronized, all at high temperatures, high speeds, that's a lot harder. When you look at it, it's a miracle that modern gas-powered cars work at all."
Laine Mitchell chuckles as he recalls the day he went in to an insurance broker to insure the Pontiac Fiero he converted into an electric vehicle. After ensuring that Mitchell hadn't made any structural changes to the vehicle, the Autoplan agent asked the routine question: had the vehicle been through AirCare?
"I said, 'It's an electric vehicle. It doesn't burn any gas,'" Mitchell says.
Was it a hybrid vehicle, the agent asked. No, Mitchell assured her. Fully electric.
Uncertain how to fill out the form, the agent called her supervisor over. Eventually it all got sorted out and Mitchell got his insurance.
Pollution was the reason Mitchell joined the Vancouver Electric Vehicle Association in the first place. On his daily commute from his home in Delta to his graveyard shift as an avionics technician at Vancouver International Airport, he'd look down at the smog-covered city from the Alex Fraser Bridge and shake his head. "I started thinking, do I really need a gas vehicle to get to work?" he explains. "And the answer is no."
Mitchell, who for 14 years raced a street stock car at Agassiz Speedway, wanted something sporty for his electric-vehicle conversion project.
He settled on the Fiero, a two-seater sports car that had sealed firewalls front and back that would keep out the fumes emitted by lead-acid batteries.
He scoured the ads on Craigslist for a car with a blown engine, but otherwise in good shape. Ironically, he kept losing out to sports car enthusiasts who wanted to buy a Fiero and soup it up with a gas-guzzling V8 engine.
Eventually he found a car for $250. The man who sold it to him didn't believe an electric conversion would work, and made Mitchell promise to bring the car back and show him, when it was done. "He really didn't believe it could be done," says Mitchell.
Mitchell estimates the conversion cost about $12,000. The 20 lead-acid batteries he installed represented a large chunk of that--about $4,000. Nickel-metal hydride batteries, he explained, would have cost $10,000 to $15,000, while the most expensive option--lithium-ion batteries, which would have given a 200-kilometre range--would have cost about $30,000.
Mitchell has driven his electric car since June. He's put about 1,300 kilometres on the car so far, mostly on his daily commute to work. Curious to see exactly what the electric car was costing, he installed a dedicated circuit in his home to plug the car into, and put a meter on it. "It's now sitting at 339 kilowatt hours," says Mitchell. At approximately seven cents per kilowatt hour, that's a cost of about $23 to travel about 1,300 kilometres.
Mitchell estimates the range of his vehicle at about 60 kilometres. It takes about seven hours to fully charge. He says driving an electric car requires "an attitude change." He has to stay within his daily range. "I can do about 20 kilometres of running-around shopping, but then I have to be home within two hours of going to work [so I can recharge]," says Mitchell.
As for speed, the electric-conversion Fiero is comparable to its gas-engine cousins. Mitchell once took the car up to 120 kilometres per hour on the freeway, but had to "back off," as he puts it, because the wheels hadn't been balanced yet and started to vibrate.
Mitchell enjoys showing off what's under the hood--and in the trunk--of his sleek black sports car. There are 12 batteries where the trunk used to be, together with the motor, main controller and charger. Up front, under the hood, are eight more batteries. Instead of the usual gas gauge, a meter on the dash shows how much current the motor is drawing and how much power remains.
Mitchell's an experienced mechanic who once built his own race car. Learning to weld aluminum so that he could scratch build a battery case for the Fiero wasn't a problem--but he admitted it might be a bit much for the average backyard mechanic. Still, he says, anyone who's handy could easily do his or her own conversion using a kit for the Chevy S-10 pickup truck sold by Canadian Electric Vehicles, a Vancouver Island-based company.
"[It's just] unbolt this and bolt that in," says Mitchell. "You have to drill a few holes, put a few bolts in, and away you go. I would say anybody who knows how to handle a wrench and has a little bit of respect for electricity could put that together, no problem."
The basic kit costs $9,525--not including batteries. Mitchell envisions a day when owners of electric vehicles can plug in at public outlets without criticism.
"People don't realize how little it takes to charge your vehicle," says Mitchell. "I think people see you plugging in and think it's like you're filling your gas tank, where you're taking $50 or $60, when in reality it's only maximum $2."
He says he's seen a huge increase in electric vehicles as gas prices rise. "I've only been a member [of the Vancouver Electric Vehicle Association] for about a year, but even in that time frame, every time I've gone to a meeting, there's more and more people... The biggest question I get asked is, 'Can I convert my car?' It gets back to what do you want to do and where do you want to go--how many kilometres do you need to go between charges? Then you can build the car to match. I think an electric car can be built for just about any purpose--it's just the cost factor."
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