Electric Juice

There are many refrains used to describe the driving force behind Miami Beach’s nascent electric car movement. “If you build it, they will come,” some say. Or, “It’s a question of what should come first, the chicken or the egg.”

The reason behind this is that very few electric cars have ever been steered down Ocean Drive, let alone recharged at a public charging station. Thus the entrepreneur’s conundrum: What should come first, the car or the charging station?

Fortunately for Miami Beach, the riddle was solved—in part —by two very different sets of innovators, both inspired by the 2006 documentary, “Who Killed The Electric Car?”

Donato Helbling and Daniel Alva, two friends with no mechanical training, took it upon themselves to convert a 1993 Volkswagen Golf into a fully electric vehicle. Armed with information gleaned from the Internet and the guidance of a Little Havana mechanic, the two gutted the car’s gas-dependent components and installed an electric motor.

Their goal was to draw attention to how easy it is to be gas-free. “We figured, if we could do it—two regular guys in a garage —then the car companies can definitely do it,” Helbling says.

It took them less than 70 days and almost $19,000 to get the “MEV Project 1” ready to exhibit at the 2008 Green Art Fair. The car, affectionately known as “The Buzz” for the sound it emits on the road, gets 50 miles on a fully charged battery and takes four hours to charge using a standard electrical plug.

“It works just like your cell phone. You charge it at night and you use it during the day,” says Helbling, a 27-year-old Argentine.

The only problem is they had nowhere to plug it in. That’s when stress arises from the fear of running out of electrical juice, says Andy Kinard, the president of Car Charging Inc.

Kinard’s start-up aims to sell and maintain electric powering stations across Florida. He knows there aren’t many all-electric cars on Florida’s roads (estimates range from 70 to 200) or even in dealerships. But Kinard thinks placing the charging infrastructure in public places like malls or condo parking lots will induce consumers to buy electric.

Consumers looking to cut their addiction to gasoline will have more choices this year. Tesla Motors, the makers of dashing electric automobiles, including the $110,000 Roadster, recently opened a dealership in South Florida. Nissan is expected to unveil the fully electric LEAF in late 2010 and Chevy should have its Volt hybrid out next year.

Therein lies the predicament. Helbling and his partner Alva had lobbied Miami Beach politicians to install free charge stations in public places. However, a tepid agreement fell through after last November’s elections.

Kinard says he plans to charge customers—no pun intended —but will maintain the charge stations and even pay the city a share of the revenue. The problem is his former employer, FPL, has a monopoly over the sale of electricity in South Florida.

Even if he could get past that hurdle, questions over how to charge customers remain. The car stations Kinard currently has —“[they] look like a cross between a gas pump and a hair drier,” he says—can take up to eight hours to fully charge a vehicle. Quick-charges with 240-volts or above could cut that by more than half.

With the cost of charging your car potentially less than a happy-hour domestic beer, it will be worth the wait.