Gentlemen, Flip Your Switches! : Electric Car Industry Gets a Charge Out of Its Own Version of Indy
By the 56th lap of the electric car race at the Phoenix International Raceway on Sunday, Gary Jackson’s 1976 Volkswagen Rabbit was due for a battery change.
His crew was ready. With spirit--if not skill--unmatched by any Indianapolis 500 pit-stop team, the nine Poway men ripped off the jalopy’s back doors, hoisted the 1,000-pound battery pack into the space where the back seats used to be, bolted it down and threw up their hands in an all-clear sign. But the car didn’t start.
The members of the Little Guy Racing team kept their cool. They had been practicing this maneuver over lunch hours, weekends and evenings for months, and, after a few tense moments and some minor adjustments to the wiring under the hood, Jackson was back zooming around the track at his top speed of 85 miles per hour.
The second annual Solar & Electric 500 held here last weekend was no Indy. Cleaner, quieter, shorter and much, much slower, the event embodied values directly opposed to those that draw hundreds of thousands of Americans to the Indianapolis Speedway each year to pay homage to loud, fast cars and the internal combustion engines that make them go.
But the number of alternative-fuel racers was nearly double what it was last year, and the average speed was up by nearly 20%. Sponsors and participants say the race’s power to spur technological advances and pique the interest of the average gas-guzzling motorist may make the Solar & Electric 500 as important to enhancing the image of electric cars as the Indy was to that of those powered by gas.
“Racing improves the breed,” says Ernie Holden, a 35-year racing veteran who plowed his entire retirement account into the first race. “Competition brings out the excitement and the people who can build high-performance cars, and that’s certainly what we need with electric vehicles.”
Particularly now, when auto makers are raising doubts about their ability to market electric cars to consumers. They contend that electric-car technology lags the legislation that demands it and that mere laws cannot create a worthwhile market.
The event--sponsored by utility Arizona Public Service--is scorned by most major auto makers, who are not anxious to display proprietary technology still in the development stages--nor to risk the chance of losing.
“If we entered, we would enter to win,” said Wayne Henegar, in charge of marketing and planning for General Motors Corp.’s electric vehicles. “And to win on Sunday and have nothing to sell on Monday would not be a good strategy for us.”
But if the auto makers were not out in force, the suppliers who have the most to gain from a growing electric vehicle market were. Goodyear, Motorola, Firestone and General Electric all donated parts to many of the racers, both to promote and test the performance of new technology developed specifically for electric cars.
And companies large and small had engineers combing the pit area for ideas from individuals they may have overlooked despite all their research money.
Chrysler Corp. was the only major auto producer to pony up the nominal $75,000 fee for the right to drive its $100,000 electric minivan as the pace car for Sunday afternoon’s electric stock car race. Chrysler believes that the race could help build a market for electric vehicles that is now nonexistent.
Such hesitance on Detroit’s part was greeted with disdain among the electric car die-hards in the “kilowatt alley” of the Phoenix raceway this weekend.
Whether they care about the environment, are fascinated by the infant technology or just want to make money from what appears to be a growing trend, the 50 racers and their groupies insisted that they are proof that interest in electric vehicles is greater than Detroit makes it out to be.
Norm Sirine of Glendale, Ariz., said his goal is to make electric car conversion accessible to everyone who wants it.
“I’m going to write it up step-by-step how I did it and distribute it free,” Sirine enthused as he wrestled with the controller under the hood of his 1988 Ford Festiva.
Nearby, Gene Cosmano checked to see that the dry ice he had lodged next to his motor with a towel and duct tape was secure. “An old racing trick,” the 69-year-old Phoenix resident said.
The majority of the race participants converted old gas-powered models whose engines were run down, using their own ingenuity or conversion kits sold by a handful of small companies throughout the country. A few drove original ground-up prototypes that they hope to produce in greater volume while the public waits for the big auto makers to get their acts together.
Dissatisfied with the performance of conventional lead-acid batteries and unwilling to wait for the auto industry, several racers used experimental batteries Sunday, including zinc air, sodium sulfur and zinc bromine.
In a frightening twist that ended the race early, driver James Worden was hospitalized when his zinc bromine battery exploded because of a failure in the cooling system, spewing noxious yellow powder over the track.
Ironically, Worden, who had finished 91 laps in about an one hour and 45 minutes, was declared the official winner of the race.
