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County may test electric Nissans
Automaker targets Bay Area as real-world proving ground for gas-free vehicles

By MIKE McCOY
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Published: Monday, September 8, 2008 at 4:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Monday, September 8, 2008 at 5:55 a.m.
Hundreds of employees of Sonoma County and its nine cities could be driving electric cars by 2010 under a deal being worked out behind closed doors with Nissan North America.

Nissan has targeted the Bay Area for tests of an all-electric car.
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The company has targeted Bay Area counties and cities as a two-year testing ground for an all-electric car it hopes to market to the general public in 2012, Nissan spokesman Fred Standish confirmed.

"We're not talking about a golf cart. It will be a real honest-to-god car that will hold four or five people and will have a range of 100 miles," he said.

Beyond that, Standish had little to say about specifics of the ongoing negotiations, citing concerns about disclosing technical and promotional information to competitors in the all-electric car market.

Neither he nor local government officials would discuss the potential cost of such vehicles.

Among the local leaders in talks with Nissan is the Sonoma County Water Agency and Cordell Stillman, its deputy chief engineer.

"Nissan's idea is two-fold, to test the vehicle in the real world and see how people react to it and then market it," Stillman said.

Stillman said the Bay Area and particularly Sonoma County were approached because of their more environmentally conscious attitudes compared with most of the country.

"And Sonoma County is the perfect backdrop for a car commercial -- the vineyards, the coastline," he said.

Many details of the program have yet to be worked out, including whether the cars would be leased or purchased, Stillman said. It will be up to each city to "cut their own deal with Nissan," he said.

"By the end of the year, they (Nissan) would like to know how many vehicles we'd each like to order," Stillman said.

"I would think we'd possibly get up to several hundred cars when you consider all the municipalities in Sonoma County and the annual turnover rate of old vehicles," he said.

Sonoma County's cities are at various stages of deciding whether to proceed with the negotiations. Rohnert Park, Santa Rosa and the county are among those that have shown an interest.

Santa Rosa Public Works Director Rick Moshier said there's "no downside" to joining the program, as far as he can tell.

"They want to see how the car works in the real world, not a lab. We're their guinea pig," he said.

The push to have electric cars play a greater role in Sonoma County and its cities is drawing praise from Ann Hancock, director of Sonoma County's Climate Protection Campaign.

All nine cities in Sonoma County and the county government have pledged to reduce greenhouse gases by 2015 to at least 25 percent below 1990 levels.

That's a tall order, considering Sonoma County has been the leader among the nine Bay Area counties in the number of cars owned per capita -- nearly one for every man, woman and child.

And automobiles are the leading factor in the production of 4.5 million tons of greenhouse gases in Sonoma County last year, nearly 60 percent of which came from motor vehicles, according to the Climate Protection Campaign.

"It's a huge part of the problem," Hancock said, adding that battery-only cars "would be a very big part of the solution."

With the price of gas continually rising as well as the global-warming impacts caused by vehicular carbon emissions, Santa Rosa fleet manager Jon Merian said an all-electric car could prove a partial savior on both.

Even the city's current hybrid vehicles, which can get up to 50 to 60 miles per gallon, use gas, he said.

"No fuel cost, no emissions and great for the environment," he said of advantages of an all-electric vehicle. Such cars, however, do require electricity to recharge the batteries, and most electrical production contributes to greenhouse gas generation.

Santa Rosa's own fleet exceeds 1,000 vehicles, including heavy-duty construction equipment. Twenty six are hybrid vehicles and 12 are all-electric.

Rohnert Park Mayor Jake Mackenzie said the City Council recently agreed to work out a potential deal with Nissan. "Certainly, we are interested. It might be very worthwhile," he said

Rohnert Park City Manager Steve Donley said his city has pledged to dramatically reduce its carbon footprint. Thus, making electric cars "a limited part" of the city's fleet of 211 light-duty, heavy duty and construction vehicles would "would make sense."

For Rohnert Park, a city of just eight square miles, "the range of how far the vehicle can travel won't be an issue," Donley said.

But in larger communities, particularly the county, the issue of distance for a car that can travel only 100 miles on a charge is problematic.

The county government would have to install charging stations throughout Sonoma County to participate in the test, said Jose Obregon, the county's general services manager whose department oversees more than 1,000 county vehicles.

"We don't want to send people on one-way trips," he said.

Obregon said he hopes the test proves successful, particularly with the county's current goal of having 250 hybrids as part of its total fleet.

"When electric cars are available, we want to be part of it," he said.

That should be 2012 if the trials go as planned, said Nissan's Standish.

"This is a whole new business, and a lot of questions have to be answered. We can't do anything without the research," he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Mike McCoy at 521-5276 or [e-mail].

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20080908/NEWS/809080304/1350&title=County_may_test_electric_cars