IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD : Torrance: Cleaner Air, Jobs Riding on Electric Bus Project

A lot of hopes are riding on ventures like the 25-seat electric bus the South Bay city of Torrance recently rolled out onto its streets. It represents an important example of efforts to develop cleaner transportation in a region plagued by smog while helping local industries, which have lost tens of thousands of aerospace and high-technology jobs in the past five year, make the transition into other markets. The 29-foot bus is described by its makers as the country’s largest battery-powered, mass-transit vehicle to operate on major thoroughfares. Hughes Power Control Systems, a Torrance-based unit of Hughes Electronics, builds the buses in partnership with Specialty Vehicle Manufacturing Co. of Downey using electronics developed to power systems aboard military jets. Torrance purchased the Zero Emission Surface Transit (ZEST) bus with $300,000 in voter-approved Los Angeles County transportation funds. The city of Los Angeles has since followed suit putting an electric bus on route through Los Angeles International Airport.

ZERO EMISSION SURFACE TRANSIT BUS

Range: 75 miles (on an 8-10 hour electric battery charge)

Battery change time: 5 minutes

Top speed: 45 m.p.h.

Wheel chair accessible

LOS ANGELES COUNTY AEROSPACE AND HIGH TECHNOLOGY EMPLOYMENT*

1988: 274,200

1991: 228,600

1994 (projected): 149,000

* Number of workers

Source: California Employment Development Department

Population

Torrance: 133,107

Population by Race and Ethnicity

Anglo: 66%

Asian: 22%

Hispanic: 10%

Black: 1%

Other: 1%

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT SPECIALIST

ROHIT SHUKLA

Director of Aerospace and High Technology Business, Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

A project like this isn’t window dressing. People need to see what is behind the occasional appearance on the road of an electric bus and what has gone into it. It represents an attempt by companies to really redefine their market sector and market relationships that makes sense to their own technology base. For the municipality it represents an opportunity to serve citizens with clean, efficient transportation and meet crucial clean air standards while supporting the local economy as it goes through this transition. That’s why it’s so important in the interim to test out not just the viability of the technology, but what it’s like to do business in a new context. It’s as much cultural shift as it is an industrial shift.

MANUFACTURER

KEN ALLISON

Sales marketing manager, Specialty Vehicle Manufacturing Co., Downey

This represents a blending of technologies and ways of doing business that come together into a product that is going to satisfy a city. With each bus we have the potential to keep 5,000 pounds of pollutant from the air each year even considering the power plant contribution needed to generate the electricity. No one else is in the country is commercially selling and delivering electric buses right now, so here’s an opportunity for California companies--not only us, but our vendors--to keep business in the state. We’re now building buses for the city of Chatanooga, Tenn. If it hadn’t been for Torrance’s leadership role and risk-taking we couldn’t have moved forward from the standpoint of having a customer to build a bus for and to demonstrate and advance the technology.

CITY EMPLOYEE

BRIAN SUNSHINE

Senior management assistant, City Manager’s Office, Torrance

You’d love a prototype to be perfect when it’s rolled out, but by the nature of what it is there’s going to be modifications. We had the rollout last fall and little things along the way had to be adjusted. Hughes designed the power-control system and Specialty designed everything around it so there were some things in the marriage of those systems that had to be worked out. It’s a learning process. When they rolled out the bus at LAX one of the comments I heard from an engineer was, “We learned so much from your bus we were able to build them into this one.” And that’s the point.