Electric Vehicles

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.

Chrysler Corp. and the local Westinghouse Electric Corp. division have two new partners -- Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. and the state of Maryland -- in their previously announced plan to develop a commercially viable electric car.The four partners said yesterday that they have joined to form the Chesapeake Consortium to coordinate research, resources and technology to design and develop electric vehicles.The consortium has applied for a $4 million federal grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation that would be used in their effort.

Is this the drive of the future? Hit the accelerator, and instead of a muffled roar there's a high-pitched whine, almost like a jet plane.That's the sound when you put the pedal to the metal in the Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.'s electric-powered Chrysler minivan, one of four the utility owns.The van is low slung, and you had better steer clear of deep potholes and commercial car washes.Yet the thing goes. No jack-rabbit starts, but this is no golf cart either."They'll fly," says Les Stephenson, who is in charge of maintaining BG&E's fleet of alternative-fuel vehicles.

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. -- In a stark departure from the purple praise that usually accompanies the announcement of a new vehicle, the Chrysler Corp. said yesterday that it would build a mini-van that customers would surely spurn.The vehicle is an electric version of Chrysler's next-generation mini-vans. The No. 3 automaker said it would build the vehicle to comply with a California law requiring that in 1998, 2 percent of the vehicles offered there by major automakers emit no pollution.While Chrysler executives called their mini-van "state of the art" for electric vehicles, they declared that the art was miserable.

You might start seeing electric cars on Maryland roads in just a few years. A consortium of Westinghouse, Chrysler, Baltimore Gas & Electric and the state of Maryland has won a $4 million federal grant to evaluate electric vehicles and devise a plan for producing non-polluting cars and vans.Making this project work is important for the state's economic development. Maryland is going to be hit hard by deep federal cuts in defense spending: it is the fifth most defense-dependent state in the U.S. Of special concern is Westinghouse and its big electronic systems group in Linthicum.

The local Westinghouse Electric Corp. division took another step yesterday toward reducing its dependence on military contracts and establishing itself as a major player in the international electric vehicle market.The Electronic Systems plant in Linthicum reached an agreement with Yuanwang Bus Group, a leading Chinese bus manufacturer, to develop two electric buses for demonstration in the People's Republic of China early next year.Westinghouse will supply two of its 230-horsepower electric-drive trains that the bus company will install in chassis produced at its Shengli Bus Factory in Beijing.

ANY DAY NOW, General Motors' sporty little electric roadster, the EV1, will reach Saturn showrooms in California and Arizona. As the first new kind of car from Detroit in about 90 years -- and one that may improve air quality in smoggy cities, trim America's dependence on foreign oil, even reduce synthetic carbon dioxide emissions that lead to global warming -- the EV1 would seem to merit at least the benefit of doubt. Yet once again, the skeptics are in full cry.The largest chorus emanates from Detroit, where the automotive media are based, though if you listen hard, you can hear the basso profundo of Big Oil in the background.

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.

Workers peered through safety goggles as they fitted together parts of the electric motors they were building on a General Motors assembly line in White Marsh. For now, the parts are made in a factory in Mexico and then shipped to Baltimore County for assembly. But not for long. By the end of the year, motors for cutting-edge electric vehicles will be built from scratch in a sprawling $244 million plant under construction next to GM's factory, now called General Motors Baltimore Operations.