The future of transportation is now available for lease.
In the next few weeks, 450 consumers in California, New York and New Jersey will begin picking up fully electric Mini coupes, charging them at home and using them as their daily commuters for the next year.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday, May 13, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 1 inches; 52 words Type of Material: Correction
Electric cars: An article in Business on Monday about a lease program for an electric Mini coupe said the Tesla Roadster was the first all-electric, highway-legal vehicle to be sold in the U.S. since World War II. In fact, Toyota sold 328 electric RAV4 EV sport utility vehicles in 2002 and 2003.
They'll pay $850 a month, plus taxes and insurance, for the right to drive the first highway-legal electric cars that don't cost more than $100,000 to hit the streets in more than a dozen years. As such, they'll serve as pioneers in what's being hailed as the next great moment in automobile history: the electric car era.
Never mind the fact that the lease cost on a Mini E is twice that of a regular Mini or that since the battery fills up the back seat, it fits just two people, said Nick Howell, a Pacific Palisades-based technology consultant who's getting one.
"I'm just excited to get a real car that is only powered by electricity," he said.
Howell, his wife, and several hundred other soon-to-be Mini E drivers got a first look at the car one evening last week in Los Angeles at the California Science Center, where BMW, which owns Mini, threw a party reminiscent of a pep rally.
Drink in hand, Howell stared across a room full of giddy fellow lessees savoring a buffet dinner and gushing over the cheery little electric vehicles, or EVs, which zip to 60 miles per hour in 8.5 seconds and top out at 95 mph. "This is going to be an adventure," Howell said.
Nearly a decade after the short-circuiting of the first modern attempt to jump-start electric transportation -- in the form of the EV1 from General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp.'s RAV4 EV and other electric test cars, most of which were destroyed after their leases expired -- the auto industry is back on the switch.
The one-year Mini E pilot program is a precursor to what experts say could be an explosion of relatively affordable electric cars in the near future.
"This is a sign of what's coming," said Edward Kjaer, director of the Electric Transportation Division at Southern California Edison, which is working with automakers including BMW and Ford Motor Co. to develop electric vehicles and infrastructure. "The real fun is going to start next year."
That's when General Motors Corp. is slated to release its much-anticipated plug-in electric Volt sedan. Hot on its heels is Ford, which last week said it would invest $550 million to retool a Michigan factory that will make electric versions of its Focus compact, due out in 2011.
