Dec 2 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Jeffrey Tomich St. Louis Post-Dispatch

- Charlton Jones is hopeful and skeptical that beleaguered General Motors Corp. can deliver its plug-in electric hybrid, the Volt, in 2010.

The retired college professor is on an unofficial waiting list to buy the car. But he's not depending on GM to kick the gasoline habit.

"If GM had been in charge in 1492, we'd still be waiting at the docks," he said.

The 68-year-old Jones is among four co-founders of the Gateway Electric Vehicle Club -- a small but impassioned platoon of St. Louis area do-it-yourselfers hoping to jump-start the electric car movement in the Midwest.

The club formed in April at the encouragement of the national Electric Auto Association. The Gateway club is one of at least 50 in the United States.

Today, local membership is up to 29 and interest remains strong even though gasoline prices have tumbled to the lowest level in years. Most members of the group don't own electric cars. Some have built their own or are in the process of doing so. Others drive Toyota Prius gasoline-electric hybrid cars.

Jones bought a red 1974 Porsche 914 on eBay for $5,000 and spent another $19,000 transforming it to run on electrons instead of petroleum, though electric vehicles can be transformed for much less. The makeover took a year, and he did almost of the work himself.

In place of the Porsche's rear engine is an electric motor, an inverter and half of the 18 8-volt batteries -- the same kind used in golf carts. The rest of the batteries are under the hood. Inside, a voltmeter and ammeter line the windshield column on the driver's side. Black marble paper covers the now useless gasoline gauge. The spark plugs are gone, along with 22 other unnecessary parts that Jones sold on eBay to help offset his costs. In case of emergencies, he keeps an extension cord in back instead of an empty gas canister.

The car's nickname, Electro Cutie, is spelled out on the bottom of each door -- the only hint at its new identity (Jones considered calling it Electro Cute, but thought it sent the wrong message). A sticker on the rear window confirms it: "Take this car and plug it."

Jones estimates his cost of running the car at 3 cents to 5 cents a mile, adding about $15 a month to his electric bill based on the relatively few miles he drives.

"It's cheaper than paying to fill up once -- by a long shot," he says. "And I don't even get as greasy as I get at a gas station."

More important, "It brought back the fun of driving," Jones says.

To be sure, electric cars aren't without limitations. They have less range than their gasoline counterparts. They can take hours to recharge and most of them don't accelerate very fast. Jones estimates it takes him almost a minute to get to 60 mph in his Porsche.

But advocates say those limitations are easily overcome if the country is serious about reducing petroleum use.

Ron Erb of O'Fallon, Ill., another co-founder of the club, built an electric vehicle for the same reasons cited by Jones: To use less oil and help make the air cleaner. He and Jones say their cars serve as rolling exhibits that demonstrate to others that the project isn't as intimidating as they might seem.

"I don't know that we can wait for GM to come out with the Volt, but people can do what I did," Jones says.

Erb, a video editor, lives in a geodesic dome on the outskirts of O'Fallon that he built with his wife and friends in the 1980s, and he preaches the merits of gardening and energy efficiency on his website. It wasn't until one week when his family watched "Who Killed the Electric Car" and Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" that he was compelled to build his own electric vehicle.

After those movies, "My wife said, 'My next car is going to be an electric car,'" recalls Erb. "'But where is it going to come from?'"

Erb was given a 1996 pickup by his sister and brother-in-law in Knoxville, Tenn., and converted it with his son Dylan, an engineering student at the University of Illinois.

"It was a great father-son adventure," Erb said.

The father-and-son team began work in June 2007 and got the truck running on New Year's Eve. Dylan decided it would be running before the start of the new year, Erb said. "We were out there with flashlights."

The project cost $7,500, but Erb was able to offset that with a $4,000 state tax rebate available in Illinois. Missouri doesn't offer tax rebates for electric cars.

Erb's pickup also runs on 144 volts. It has 18 8-volt batteries -- four under the hood and the rest under the bed.

Cruising along a roadway near Erb's home, the pickup quietly accelerates to 55 mph with the ammeter on the left windshield column bouncing between 125 and 200 amps depending on whether he's on flat ground or topping a hill.

The truck is used mostly by Erb's wife for her six-mile commute to school. The couple also take it to town on errands. Erb says he's driven the truck as far as 35 miles before recharging the batteries. That took seven hours but cost just 98 cents -- a compromise he's happy to live with.

Just in case he needs to pass someone on the highway, "It'll go 80," he says, "but not very far."

jtomich@post-dispatch.com -- 314-340-8320

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