Electric Car

Electric wagons powered by heavy batteries quietly zipped through the streets of Baltimore, carrying beer, milk, fruit and other goods from wholesalers to shops and homes. Some delivery companies installed their own charging stations or used a downtown garage maintained by the local utility to charge their wagons overnight. This experimental period in transportation wasn't during the gasoline price shocks of the early 1970s. Try 1911. Electric vehicles would grow to account for about one-quarter of the automobiles in the United States by the 1920s, historians estimate.

In an article about how some employers allow their employees to charge their electric cars at work, reporter Lorraine Mirabella describes the General Motors plant in White Marsh where employees can charge their cars as an employee benefit during work hours ("Plugging In On The Job", Feb. 19). The article is longer than it needs to be for what it describes and could be longer for what it didn't include. Nowhere in the article was it mentioned the average price a consumer would pay for the electric car. The article also stated that the company is part of a Department of Energy initiative to include charging stations for employees to use while at work.

Imagine making fewer — or zero — stops at the gas station. Instead, you simply drive home and plug your car into your house to charge up overnight. On top of that, your car emits no air pollution. Within the next decade, such fueling ease could be commonplace. New technology is just breaking into our markets and communities: plug-in electric vehicles. Currently, drivers have two plug-in choices: plug-in hybrids with small gasoline engines to assist the battery, and fully electric vehicles.

Employees at General Motors' plant in White Marsh have an unusual workplace benefit. Anyone who drives an electric car can plug it in to charge while they work. At the plant, which produces transmissions and electric motors, workers can park their electric vehicles — or EVs — in any of eight spaces under two solar-powered canopies in the employee lot. "You encourage the use of EVs and give employees some benefit," said William Tiger, plant manager for General Motors Baltimore Operations.

Employees at General Motors' plant in White Marsh have an unusual workplace benefit. Anyone who drives an electric car can plug it in to charge while they work. At the plant, which produces transmissions and electric motors, workers can park their electric vehicles — or EVs — in any of eight spaces under two solar-powered canopies in the employee lot. "You encourage the use of EVs and give employees some benefit," said William Tiger, plant manager for General Motors Baltimore Operations.

Genovation Cars Inc., a Rockville-based company, wants to do what many in the auto industry have failed to do — build a fully electric, battery-powered vehicle that the public embraces. On Thursday, company executives were at the Glenn L. Martin Wind Tunnel on the University of Maryland, College Park campus to show off the aerodynamic properties of the G2, as the car is called, and talk up their project. Genovation has won a $135,000 product development grant from the Maryland Industrial Partnerships, a university program.

DETROIT -- General Motors Corp. said yesterday that it was reviewing its electric-car development program to determine whether to push ahead with commercial production during the next few years.The GM statement, issued by a spokesman with little elaboration, suggested that the No. 1 automaker, pressed by huge financial losses, could either delay or scale back the project, or seek a partner to help bear the costs.GM would not say whether the subject had been scheduled for discussion at the company's board meeting, which was held yesterday.

DETROIT -- Nissan Motor Corp. said yesterday that it had developed an electric car that can be fully recharged in 15 minutes, a significant improvement over electric car batteries announced to date.But industry experts say the Japanese automaker's latest entry in the race to develop electric cars faces numerous technical hurdles before the battery in the vehicle could be sold widely.Nissan's FEV, or Future Electric Vehicle, would be powered by a nickel-cadmium battery that could be 40 percent recharged in six minutes, but recharging would require a special, high-energy power source, not a normal electric outlet.

Maryland's role in the development of an electric car received a push from the General Assembly's approval of $1.25 million in funding to help state defense contractors convert to commercial markets.In addition to pumping $500,000 into a program to develop an electric car, the state budget includes $500,000 for the development of a computerized police car and $250,000 to help leverage federal money used to assist defense contractors in converting to commercial markets.The $250,000 was only a fourth of the $1 million requested by Gov. William Donald Schaefer to help defense contractors cope with a sharply declining military budget.

Electric car history: 1900: First electric wagon built in Baltimore by the Schaum Automobile and Manufacturing Co. 1906: Baltimore Bargain House, a dry-goods wholesaler, bought an electric truck, the first of its kind used for heavy hauling in the city. It could carry 10,000 pounds with a top speed of 5 mph, and could go 40 miles before needing to be recharged. 1911: Baltimore Gas & Electric Co.'s predecessor bought 10 electric wagons for its use and became a vendor and servicer of electric vehicles.

Letter writer Abigail Ross Hopper talks about offering incentives to stop using gasoline ("Maryland is charged up about electric cars," Dec. 12). Maryland gives an excise tax credit to buyers of electric plug-in vehicles and gives them up to a $400 income tax credit. How then does Maryland collect transportation taxes from that car that drives on our roads? It is shooting oneself in the foot to give away taxpayers' money on the front end and not collect the transportation taxes. Richard Jendrek, Berlin Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

The author of the article, "5 reasons buyers don't charge ahead on electric vehicles," (Dec. 4) is clearly unaware of the numerous steps Maryland has taken under Gov. Martin O'Malley's leadership to create incentives and facilitate the adoption of electric vehicles in our state. In 2009, Governor O'Malley and the legislature worked together to require Maryland to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020. Widespread adoption of electric vehicles is one of many strategies designed to help us reach that goal.

Commentator Bob Bruninga would have us believe that electric cars could substantially increase the energy efficiency and decrease the environmental impact of autos while providing an economical and practical alternative to our current gasoline-fueled fleet ("Keep on open mind on electric cars," Oct. 4). Nothing could be farther from the truth. Let's look at energy efficiency. The gasoline-fueled internal combustion engine has an efficiency rate of about 25 percent, while diesels have an efficiency rate of 30 percent.

Almost everything you read or hear about electric vehicles (EVs) is wrong - either written by deep-pocket oil company cronies, narrow-minded media, others with an interest in maintaining our total reliance on an oil society, or writers stuck in the century-old legacy thinking of the gas tank fill-once-a-week car model. The electric car is not a general replacement for the long-ranging gas car. But it is an ideal improvement for the majority of regular commuters and local travelers who would never have to go to a gas station again.

Like a few thousand other vacationers one Saturday this summer, my wife Novia and I pulled into the crowded parking lot at the end of the boardwalk in Ocean City , looking forward to an afternoon of sun, sand and souvenirs. Unlike anyone else there, though, we were completing a meandering 520-mile journey that began a few days earlier in the mountains of Western Maryland - a journey in our a fully electric car, a 2012 Nissan Leaf. That's right, we drove all the way across the state on nothing but electrons.

Genovation Cars Inc., a Rockville-based company, wants to do what many in the auto industry have failed to do — build a fully electric, battery-powered vehicle that the public embraces. On Thursday, company executives were at the Glenn L. Martin Wind Tunnel on the University of Maryland, College Park campus to show off the aerodynamic properties of the G2, as the car is called, and talk up their project. Genovation has won a $135,000 product development grant from the Maryland Industrial Partnerships, a university program.

EVEN PUTTING aside the problem of extension cords, I don't see the new electric car catching on.I know, GM's new EV1 (Eveready 1?) doesn't actually require an electrical outlet. It's battery powered -- like the Energizer bunny or those annoying Duracell battery people of TV commercial fame.But I wonder if that's an improvement.It's hard enough to buy a car as it is. Now, we're looking at a time when, as you're ready to leave the showroom, certain you've been slickered out of everything but your Baltimore Browns boxer shorts, your final question to the salesperson will be: Are batteries included?

In what would be an extraordinary collaboration by Detroit's automakers, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are discussing jointly building an electric car to meet the requirements of the clean-air law first enacted in California and recently adopted by several Northeastern states, including Maryland.Officials of the companies said yesterday that they were considering the project because of impending deadlines.The state laws require that by the 1998 model year, 2 percent of every auto company's sales be "zero-emission vehicles," presumably electric cars.

William Magruder Waters, a retired Johns Hopkins and Navy electrical engineer and inventor who built his own car and held patents related to radar imaging, died of congestive heart failure Dec. 17 at Renaissance Gardens at Oak Crest Village. He was 86. The son of Methodist missionaries, he was born in Kobe, Japan. He came to the U.S. when his father accepted a ministerial assignment in Roanoke, Va. He later lived in Gambrills, Harmans and Goldsboro, and was a 1943 graduate of Beall High School in Frostburg.

Our Maryland state government subsidizes buyers of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles $360 each, on top of the federal subsidy of about $6,000. The customers for this product are mainly the well-to-do. The alleged purpose of this redistribution of wealth is to conserve fuel and reduce harmful emissions. To provide a comparable benefit, at far less expense, to working and middle class Marylanders who cannot, even with subsidies, justify the expense of the exotic vehicles for which the state is investing money developing plug-in power stations at various locations, why not look into free compressed air for all those under-inflated tires?