In his Santa Monica gallery, Samuel Freeman displays a nifty bit of automotive art, a full-size replica of a Chevy V-8 engine made out of stained glass. But Freeman himself worships at the church of the electric car.
In November, Freeman was one of nearly 2,000 people who signed up to lease a Mini E -- an experimental electric-vehicle conversion of BMW's charming, capering retro-runabout. In early June, he was one of the lucky 450 Americans to get a car -- his is No. 104 -- and since then he's been ripping up the streets of Venice and Santa Monica, quietly.
"The acceleration is huge," says Freeman, 34, as he mats the accelerator. "It's got a tremendously lightweight feel."
"It's all the G-force of a sports car without the guilt," he says. "I love it."
But not everyone in the EV community is so enthused. For the last several months, a not-entirely-civil war of words has erupted on blogs and Facebook between BMW and those who'd volunteered to pay $850 a month for the privilege of leasing a Mini E for a year. Critics say the cars were months late in reaching customers. A shortage of high-power cables left many dealing with desperately slow recharging times. Some of what BMW calls its Mini E "pioneers" have dropped out of the program because of delays in the installation of home charging equipment, others because of the expense of upgrading their home's electrical service.
Late last month, the grass-roots EV advocacy group Plug In America, based in Santa Monica, denounced the Mini E program as "botched." BMW's muddled rollout of the Mini E "makes the whole technology look like it's not ready for prime time," says Chelsea Sexton, a member of the group's advisory board.
The accusation with the most sting is that BMW is exploiting a loophole in the California Air Resources Board's Zero Emission Vehicle mandate. Automakers who sell more than 60,000 units a year in California must offer a certain number of high-efficiency vehicles to the public. However, because the rules don't distinguish between selling and leasing vehicles, BMW is getting full credit for vehicles that will be on the road for only a year. (The hydrogen-powered Honda Clarity also benefits from the rules.)
For many EV advocates, the issue resurrects the painful memory of GM's EV1. When GM no longer needed the cars to meet state requirements, the cars were taken from lessees and crushed.
"We're afraid that it's going to be the '90s all over again," Sexton says.
