SOLAR DERBYTHE TRUE STORY OF A SUN-LOVING, ELECTRIC-POWERED HOT-RODDER

He has a big picture book devoted to the history of auto racing--he helped found the National Auto Racing Historical Society--and is flipping pages until he comes to a photo of a white car.

"In 1927 a race-car builder named Frank Lockhart had the Stutz Blackhawk," Holden begins. In the early days of automobiles, racers competed for land speed records on the long straight sands at Ormond Beach, Florida. Lockhart was one of them, and achieved 203 mph.

"When I tell you the mechanics, you tell me where we have gone with the internal combustion engine since then," Holden says, as he rattles off the Blackhawk's specs: a 182-cubic-inch V16 with four overhead camshafts and dual centrifugal superchargers with intercoolers. "The latest cars are virtually identical to this."

The point he is making is that internal combustion technology has not advanced in the slightest since 1927.

Until now. Until the electric car.
"If Lockhart came back today, he'd be surprised not that the revolution is here, but that it took so long to get here."

Even now, the revolution has been government imposed. Because of the California Air Resources Board, the automobile industry has been thrown into a situation somewhat like that in the late nineteenth century, when dozens of companies were experimenting with everything--including steam--to power a vehicle, and the final technology had not yet shaken out. Today, everyone from multinational automakers to guys in garages are working on the electric car, and even some of the companies on the cutting edge are unaware of each other's existence.

What they're working toward is a better battery. That's the stumbling block. And it's been the stumbling block for a hundred years.

Electric cars have been around since the 1880s, and were favored by ladies and strait-laced professional types, mostly because, as one historian says, "They lacked the rough and tumble excitement of the gas or steam cars."

Although they never became practical, electric cars never quite died. There are people in Phoenix, in fact, who have driven them to and from work every day. Lee Clouse, for instance, is one of the founders of the local chapter of the Electric Auto Association, a group made up mostly of retired engineers who love to tinker. Clouse drove an electric Bradley GT kit car every day for a couple of years. It ran great, but started to slow down after only twenty miles.

Because of their lack of range, electric cars could never be anything but second cars. Ray Hobbs, head of electric vehicles for Arizona Public Service, describes the situation. "The muscle cars of the Sixties had big engines," he says. "With electric cars, it's sort of almost in reverse--the batteries are big and heavy and performance is really bad, sluggish and slow."

That's where today's research is concentrating, Hobbs says. "The newer batteries are lighter and develop more energy and run a lot longer."

Hobbs' employer, along with Southern California Edison and Dreisbach ElectroMotive Incorporated (DEMI) in Santa Barbara, is sponsoring a car in this weekend's electric race. The vehicle is equipped with one of those newer batteries, a zinc-air design that DEMI created and that the company hopes can give the car a 200-mile range. Honda is supplying a CRX body.

Like other Japanese car makers, Honda has been aggressive in racing lately--it just won the Iceberg Phoenix Grand Prix--so its involvement in the Solar and Electric 500 is a sign of some seriousness. Zinc-air is by no means the final word, however. General Motors is using a lead-acid battery in its Impact--actually, 870 pounds of it. Although not in the race, General Motors will be making an appearance with a booth promoting its electric Impact. The car should go into production within the next five years. But the two-seater, whose 100-plus-mph top speed is a good deal more impressive than its 120-mile range, is viewed even by its manufacturer as a second car. But then there is Peter Bos, who is convinced he has the battery problem just about licked, and can build you the one car that will do everything. With a background in both business and engineering, Bos started his work on electric cars by realizing that people want what they've already got in the parking lot. He is a man free of prattle about doing away with air pollution by taking the bus. He loves performance cars. He works with guys who customize Porsches so they will go faster. He loves, he admits, the very idea of cars.

"For most people, it's the only time they have any privacy," he says from his company's headquarters in San Mateo, California. "I grew up in Europe, and to me a car is a wonder. If it's cold, I turn on the heat. In the summer I turn on the air conditioning. I listen to beautiful music. The concept is wonderful."

Bos believes the all-electric car will never make it, because no battery, no matter what kind, can store enough energy. Hence, his design, which can be dropped into any vehicle, uses a combination of electric motor and small internal combustion engine. The gas engine doesn't drive the car, however; it makes electricity to feed two AC motors to drive the wheels.