In 1978, when Jimmy Carter was still president, Czech immigrant Stan Skokan thought it would be a great idea to open up a dealership for electric cars. The idea didn’t seem farfetched — several companies were producing small numbers of electric cars, and Carter’s Department of Energy was actually encouraging people like Skokan, an accomplished Hewlett-Packard engineer, to build and sell the next transportation revolution.
Skokan’s career at Hewlett-Packard started in 1969, and he played a major role in designing HP’s first handheld calculator. In the 1970s, he was among a few engineers building electric vehicles (EVs for short) in backyards in the 1970s using cheap surplus motors and batteries from the aviation industry.
Eventually Skokan got into the business, and from 1979 to 1984 he sold dozens of cars made by Jet Industries out of a nondescript industrial building at 2170 Old Middlefield Road. Half of the cars went to private individuals and the other half to government agencies, including post offices, the cities of San Jose, Palo Alto, Milpitas, and even the Navy at Moffett Field.
Years later, Skokan’s part-time business, Electric Vehicles Inc., is still listed in the Mountain View phone book even though he and his wife Wendy live in Redwood City. And he is still acting as a used electric car dealer and mechanic for many of the same vehicles he sold in the early ’80s. Aside from needing new lead-acid batteries every few years, the cars have been nearly maintenance-free, can operate at freeway speeds and go 50 miles on a charge, he said.
Skokan was the Northern California distributor for Jet Industries — a company which he said was the most successful electric car conversion company of the era. Over 1,400 cars rolled out of its factory in Austin, Texas, all of which were based on new production gas-powered cars from Subaru, Ford and Chrysler.
Models included the “Electrica” sedan, based on the Chrysler Horizon or the Ford Escort. Jet Industries also produced the “Electra-van,” based on the small Subaru 600 van or a larger Chrysler van or truck.
Since the heyday of his dealership, Skokan has become an authority on the electric car business and has been chairman of the Silicon Valley chapter of the Electric Auto Association as well as its national chairman. He seems to know everyone in the West Coast EV world, including those building the Tesla in San Carlos, and another in development, called the Wrightspeed, in Menlo Park.
Skokan encourages people to take a ride in one of these high-performance electric cars if possible. While older EVs went 60 miles per charge if you’re lucky, the new Tesla has a 250-mile range and can accelerate from 0 to 60 in 4 seconds. The Wrightspeed X1 can out-accelerate nearly every production car on the planet, going from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 3 seconds, and has a range of 100 miles without recharging its lithium ion batteries.
Bay Area perfect for EVs
While it is not uncommon for EV fans to advocate an electric car renaissance among trend-setting stars in Hollywood, Skokan always tells people that the Bay Area is the best place to introduce electric cars to the world, for several reasons: The shorter commutes are better for battery-powered cars, the car culture sways less towards off-road and performance cars and more towards practicality, and the diverse population here is quicker to embrace technology.“When the rising curve of oil price crosses the falling curve of battery price, there will be a mass market for electric vehicles,” claims the Web site for Wrightspeed Inc., which plans to jumpstart the electric car revolution with its 170-mile-per-gallon supercar.
But small companies like Wrightspeed face some serious obstacles, Skokan said. One big obstacle is safety regulations, which require companies to pay for multiple crash tests. When each prototype car costs as much as $100,000, it can get expensive. So Wrightspeed is having trouble getting its 1,500-pound, tube-frame car to pass safety regulations.
While Skokan, 64, knows more about electric cars than just about anyone, he isn’t ready to jump into the business again. When asked if he would ever start a new company if electric cars became popular, he emphatically answers “no,” as if the difficulties he’d seen others face are reason enough to stay away.
Big automakers getting involved
Meanwhile, a few large automakers are getting into the game with hybrids like the Toyota Prius — which is essentially an electric car waiting for more batteries. And kits are becoming available to convert the Prius into a “plug-in hybrid.” (Skokan said the Prius he owns can go four miles before its gas engine kicks in to recharge the batteries.)Skokan said the largest obstacle facing electric cars is “the unwillingness of major automakers to embrace advanced technology.”
A case in point is General Motors, which leased the popular EV1 electric car in the late 1990s before killing the program a few years ago, a story documented in the documentary film “Who Killed the Electric Car?” The movie rails against major automakers and the federal and state governments for preventing the otherwise popular cars from gaining a foothold in consumer consciousness.
Following the bad press, GM showed off the Chevy Volt concept car in January at the Detroit Auto Show. Hailed by auto critics as signaling a change of heart for GM, the car behaves like an electric car for the first 40 miles before a 1.7-liter gas engine kicks in to charge the batteries.
Today, the quasi-retired Skokan has simplified his life, devoting his time to such tasks as installing solar panels at his home. He says they make the 1980s-era EVs he drives entirely independent of fossil fuel-generated electricity.
“That makes it completely non-controversial,” Skokan said. “Nobody can object because you aren’t clean enough.”
INFORMATION:
To learn more about Electric Vehicles Inc., or to enlist its services, contact Stan Skokan at (650) 964-3974.
EVs by the numbers
It is estimated that electric vehicles (EVs) emit less than 10 percent of the air pollution of the average vehicle in California, even with power plant pollution factored in. But are they practical for the average commuter?Average distance traveled by 80 percent of U.S. cars daily: 50 miles
Average distance traveled by an electric car on one charge: 60 miles
Record distance traveled by an electric car on one charge: 478 miles
Average cost for parts to convert an existing car to electric: $7,500
Average cost, with labor, to convert an existing car to electric: $15,000
Cost for a factory-built electric car: $20,000 to $60,000
Average life span of lead acid batteries: 20,000 miles
Estimated lifespan of lithium ion batteries: 100,000 miles
Maintenance costs for an EV over 100,000 miles: 8 cents per mile
Maintenance costs for a gas car over 100,000 miles: 22 cents per mile
Source: Silicon Valley chapter of the Electric Auto Association
E-mail Daniel DeBolt at ddebolt@mv-voice.com
