A Less-Than-Enthusiastic City Bureaucracy Stalls The Local Electric Auto Industry. By Dan Huff A TUCSON COUPLE'S bid to develop relatively well-paying jobs in a non-polluting manufacturing industry appears to have been quashed, at least temporarily, due to lack of enthusiasm by City of Tucson bureaucrats. Mary Ann Chapman and her husband John Witt are proposing to build electric vehicles here, and they had the tentative backing of Tucson Electric Power, the University of Arizona and Pima County. TEP and Pima County had agreed to purchase five electrically powered trucks each to help the fledgling company, EcoElectric, get started. The UA had issued a request for proposals to supply five such vehicles. While Witt and Chapman also asked the City of Tucson to purchase five of the company's electric pickups, and Tucson Mayor George Miller was an enthusiastic supporter, city staffers seemed reluctant to recommend the City Council vote to buy the vehicles, Chapman said. So the couple withdrew their request. Miller says he still thinks the idea is a good one, but politically it would have been impossible to sell to other Council members in view of the staff's strong thumbs down. He said they felt the price was too high (at $27,200 per vehicle), the truck's 50-mile range was not adequate for city purposes, and adding electric vehicles to the city fleet would only contribute to air pollution in the Four Corners area, where most of Tucson's electricity is produced by coal-fired generators. Miller noted, however, that air pollution at a single generating plant is potentially far easier to deal with than the brown smudge that passes for air in a place like Phoenix, where hundreds of thousands of gasoline-powered vehicles contribute to serious smog problems. "The reason we were given," Chapman said, discussing the stumbling blocks, "is it's just too much money, and there are more important things the city needs to spend money on. And then the City Council turns around and does that offer with Janos, and now they're talking about this Starr Pass deal." The Council offered to pay the Tucson Museum of Art $750,000 to keep Janos Restaurant in an historic home on the museum's grounds. The museum rejected the proposal. The Council also entertained a request to assume ownership of the proposed Starr Pass Resort in the Tucson Mountains for 20 years, thus eliminating a massive property tax burden. Last week, after a great deal of media criticism, the developers withdrew the request. Chapman said an EcoElectric manufacturing operation here, if successful, would have created assembly jobs paying between $10 and $12.50 an hour. Ironically, the City Council just approved a policy to encourage the development of high-paying jobs in clean manufacturing industries. Apparently that doesn't include the electric car business, which Toyota Motor Corporation Chairman Soichiro Toyoda recently called "absolutely essential to Earth and to the human race" when it comes to "preserving the environment in the 21st century." And never mind that Tucson City Councilman Steve Leal is toying with a plan to develop a massive solar-electric generating plant to take advantage of our 340-plus days of sunshine yearly. He's thinking such a project might make a great use for the 23,000 acres of former farmland the city bought in the Avra Valley for the water rights. Leal theorizes it might be possible to eliminate the $60-million annual electrical bill local governmental entities must pay. Yes, God forbid city staffers should lend their support to an entrepreneurial program that might one day employ thousands of Tucsonans in a non-polluting, world-class industry ultimately fueled by our most abundant natural resource. Undoubtedly the Japanese, a competent people, will step in and do it for us. "One group build would help us get the price breaks we need to get on our feet," Chapman explained, adding it would have taken a total commitment of 25 vehicles to crank up the company's manufacturing here. She said they figured they could sell an additional five pickups to individuals. The trucks, which are modified longbed Chevy S-10 pickups, would have a top speed close to 75 mph. The 50-mile range is expected to double within the next year with the introduction of nickel hydride battery technology, Chapman said. In addition, Chapman and Witt want to parley their proposed truck conversion operation into a factory to build a small electric car from the ground up for use in-town and within neighborhoods. "We believe the truck conversion market, while it can be a good economic development opportunity for the short to middle term, is going to have a relatively limited life," Chapman says, "Eventually almost all electric cars will be built from the ground up." She noted the electric car industry has much different requirements than the traditional auto industry, and its assembly lines need not be located near large steel production plants. Their partner in the car venture is Bob Walkup, formerly an executive with Hughes Missile Systems and a past president of the Greater Tucson Economic Council (GTEC). They estimate the worldwide market for an electric car with a 30-mile range at 25 mph at roughly half a million units a year, Chapman said. In addition to the county, TEP and GTEC, Chapman and Witt are receiving encouragement and political support from officials at O'Rielly Chevrolet. But Chapman said they need $5 million to build a car plant, which they'd prefer to see placed near Civano, Tucson's proposed solar village. "At the moment we have one serious backer in the Dallas area," Chapman said, "and he's trying to get us to move there. We're trying to persuade him it makes more sense to live in Tucson." Apparently some people are just too fond of the Old Pueblo for their own good.

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