NATURAL PERSPECTIVES:

Vic and I recently drove through the San Bernardino Mountains and were shocked to see that gas at Angelus Oaks was a whopping $5.19 a gallon. With gasoline already costing more than $4 a gallon locally, we’ve been investigating greener transportation alternatives.

Our Toyota Highlander, which we use for all of our out-of-town trips, gets 23 mpg on the highway, but only 18 mpg in the city. According to www.edmunds.com, a new hybrid Highlander would cost $34,000 to $40,000 and get 25 mpg on the highway and 27 in the city. It hardly seems worthwhile to trade our car in for a hybrid with such a small advantage in gas savings.

Maybe what would make more sense for Vic and me would be something completely different. An alternative mode of transportation just for around-town errands is an eGO electric scooter.

I recently checked them out at Electric Cyclery, 900 N. Coast Hwy, Laguna Beach. These zippy little scooters travel 20 to 25 miles on a charge, with a top speed of 24 mph. The eGO LX is ridden in the bike lane, sells for about $1,899, and has more safety features than the slightly less expensive eGO Classic, including front and rear turn signals, lights and a loud horn.

These eGO scooters plug in to a regular 110-volt household current and charge fully in six hours for mere pennies. With the current cost of gasoline, these electric scooters would get the cost equivalent of 1,000 miles per gallon. You can read more about them at www.egovehicles.com.

My next step was to look into the micro-sized Smart Car, a French-made vehicle sold in this country as the Smart Fortwo. I’ve seen a couple of them on the highway, and they’re as cute as a bug’s ear. At less than 9 feet long, they’re half the size of a big American car. Putting less material into a vehicle means fewer resources are used in the manufacturing process, so that’s one way in which the Smart Fortwo is a green car.

The three-cylinder, gasoline-powered Smart Fortwo holds two people plus 8 cubic feet of cargo space and gets 33 mpg in the city and 41 mpg on the highway. They start at $11,590 for the basic model, $13,590 for the mid-price coupe with air conditioning and power windows, or $16,590 for the convertible.

The closest dealership that handles the Smart Car is Mercedes Benz of Laguna Niguel. I took one for a test drive last week and was really impressed with the car and the green philosophy behind it. I’ll have more to say about the Smart Fortwo in another column.

Unfortunately for impulse buyers, there is a long waiting list for these cute little cars. For now, you have to plunk down $99 to reserve one and wait 12 to 18 months for delivery.

Electric cars may soon make a comeback. Right now, fleet models are being sold, but nothing practical is available to the general public. Battery options on today’s electric cars include lead-acid, nickel cadmium, nickel metal anhydride, lithium ion, lithium ion polymer and lithium titanate.

Drawbacks to these various types of batteries can include, depending on the battery type, heavy weight, high replacement price, slow recharge time, short driving range on a charge and, rarely, explosions. An exploding battery isn’t a feature we’re looking for.

There is one really good electric car on the road. Tesla Motors makes an all-electric, lithium ion battery-powered vehicle that seems to have it all. It’s fast (0 to 60 in 3.9 seconds), is spectacularly sporty, goes 220 miles on a charge and gets the equivalent of 256 mpg. Gee, why aren’t we all driving a Tesla Roadster? It must be the price, which starts at $109,000. Also, it takes a year once you’ve paid your $55,000 reservation fee to actually get one in your garage. Maybe we’ll buy a Tesla if one of us lands a starring role in a movie.

Practical electric cars that can drive on most roads are still a way off. The ZENN Motor Company and Global Electric Motorcars both make electric cars, but the top speed of their models is 25 mph. That isn’t street legal on a road with a posted speed limit of more than 35 mph, which is most of our arterial roads.

Phoenix Motorcars of Ontario has vehicles that travel at freeway speeds, but right now they’re only available for fleet purchase. Their all-electric sport utility vehicles and trucks won’t be available to the public until 2010, the same year the all-electric Chevy Volt is expected.

Another non-gasoline fuel option is natural gas. Honda made its natural-gas-powered Civic GX available to the public this year. It had formerly been available only for fleets, but they’re in stock in Cerritos.

The Civic GX produces nearly zero emissions, which has helped it earn an America’s Greenest Car award. It can travel about 220 miles on a tank of natural gas, getting 24 mpg in the city and 36 on the highway. The price of $25,000 for the Civic GX can be offset somewhat with tax incentives.

For about $4,000, consumers can buy a Phill refueling station from Fuel Maker that hooks to the home natural gas line, or they can refuel at stations found by contacting the California Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition. The tank on a Civic GX holds the equivalent of about 8 gallons of natural gas, which costs less than $2 per gallon.

Because natural gas is domestically produced, is more abundant than crude oil and results in fewer emissions, Vic is thinking of replacing his 10-year-old Honda Accord with a natural gas-fueled Honda Civic for his commutes to class.

The biggest drawback seems to be that refueling an empty tank with a Phill takes 16 hours.

This sounds like a lot of green options, but there are more to research.

In the meantime, Vic said he’d buy me a pair of good walking shoes. What a sport.

VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and environmentalists. They can be reached at vicleipzig@aol.com.