Electrics

By Margot Hornblower/Los Angeles

Auto and oil companies are gearing up for a battle to squelch California's electric-vehicles mandate just as New York and Massachusetts prepare to enact equally stringent zero-emission rules. But a dirty little secret may emerge this week when scores of EV drivers converge on a public hearing at the California Air Resources Board--namely, that GM, Ford, Honda, Toyota and other companies have worked to undermine the mandate to build tens of thousands of battery-run vehicles by 2003.

Automakers say consumers are resisting EVs, which have a range of up to 120 miles between charges. But the electric-car crowd contends that manufacturers have hardly advertised and have either shut down production lines or forced consumers to wait so many months for an EV that they give up.

Now drivers and would-be lessees of GM's EV-1 sports coupe are organizing on the Internet. Meanwhile the auto lobby is working on Governor GRAY DAVIS and California legislators. The wild card: a group of Silicon Valley types who embrace the clean machines. As EV-1 driver STEVEN KIRSH, founder of Infoseek, put it last week, "The problem with electric vehicles is lack of product, not demand."

--By Margot Hornblower/Los Angeles