A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM

GM'S ELECTRIC CAR WILL SOON BE ON THE STREETS

You've got to run to the mall, so you pull the plug from the electric outlet in
your garage, yank the cord so it retracts into the back of your car, get behind
the wheel, and put the vehicle in gear. You turn out of your driveway and zoom
up the street, your electric car making about as much noise as an electric
razor.

Such a scenario moved a giant step closer to reality when General Motors
recently announced it would be the first major auto manufacturer to mass-produce
an electric car. Production will begin in several years at a plant capable of
turning out 25,000 vehicles a year. GM will market the vehicle as a second
family car, based on a 2,200-pound, two-seater prototype called the Impact.

Clean-air legislation, not rising gas prices, has provided the stimulus to
produce electric cars after similar efforts failed in the Seventies. New
California legislation requires that, by 1998, vehicles without tail pipe
emissions constitute 2 percent of each automaker's fleet sold within the state.
By 2003 that figure must rise to 10 percent, or more than 200,000 cars annually.
Massachusetts and New York recently adopted similar rules.

The electric car that is GM's response to the new laws will have a maximum range
of 120 miles and a top speed of 75 miles per hour. But the vehicle is no
soupedup golf cart: It will roar from 0 to 60 mph in a startling eight seconds.
Made from strong, lightweight aluminum and plastic, it sports a sleek shape that
makes it 33 percent more resistant than any standard car to the dragging effect
created by air passing over the car body at high speeds. Also, its specially
designed tires roll twice as easily as those made of conventional rubber and
weigh only 12.5 pounds each.

All these improvements will come at a price. While GM won't comment on what the
production model might cost, auto analysts estimate the price at between $20,000
and $30,000. "We can't build some glory car that's too expensive for anyone to
buy," says spokeswoman Toni Simonetti. "But the car has got to perform like a
regular car or consumers won't buy it."

Despite the hefty initial expense, electric cars have many long-range benefits,
both economic and environmental. Because they don't use fossil fuels, the cars
themselves create no air pollution. They will produce some indirect emissions,
however, as power plants generate the additional electricity needed to recharge
the cars. Taking these increased power-plant emissions into account, some
studies show that electric cars will still produce, per mile, 98 percent less
carbon monoxide and nitrous oxides, 25 percent less carbon dioxide, and about
the same amount of sulfur as conventional cars.

Electric cars don't cost much to maintain because there's no need for oil
changes or tune-ups, no radiators to fill, and no filters or spark plugs to
replace. Recharging the battery pack takes from two hours to eight hours and
costs about half as much as a comparable amount of gasoline. Over 100,000 miles,
an electric car winds up costing at least $5,000 less than a gas guzzler,
including the cost of replacing the $1,500 battery pack every 20,000 miles.

Those batteries present electric cars' only serious environmental problem.
Replacing the GM prototype's 32 ten-volt lead-acid batteries, similar to a
typical car battery, every couple of years will create a huge increase in toxic
lead waste. Each year, car owners already dump some 20 million dead batteries,
each containing roughly 18 pounds of lead. To help remedy the problem,
leadrecycling legislation has been introduced before Congress. With tougher
pollution laws and increasing environmental awareness spurring the refinement
and production of electric cars, the historic New Year's Eve of 2000 could very
well find celebrators driving to parties in whirring cars with wall-socket
plugs.