"NO!"

My boss came running up to me… ”That was great! … You didn’t embarrass the Company, and no one was here!!...it’s perfect!”

It was a typical beautiful spring day in Arizona. I was standing on the track at Phoenix International Raceway (PIR), where the Indy Cars and NASCAR compete. I had just watched my ”everyone gets one screw-up and this is yours"-moment, cover 368 miles on the track in 4.5 hours.

It doesn’t seem like much looking back from 2016, but in the spring of 1991 battery electric vehicles were considered closer to golf carts than real cars. Our Team had won Ernie Holden’s[1] first Solar and Electric 500 Race[2]. The event was witnessed by about 75 folks sitting in the sun drenched cavernous PIR stands, watching 13 battery powered vehicles quietly circle the one mile oval.

The second person who ran up to me had a different point of view than the boss, “…Where did that come from?!… I had no idea that battery even existed!!” Bill Sheaffer was the Director of the newly created United States Department of Energy, Advanced Battery Consortium[3] his enthusiasm was very welcomed after the emotional relief expressed by my boss. The boss was truly concerned that this public display in competing in a race would be deeply frowned upon in Arizona Public Service (APS), and there could be consequences for participation.

What made me want to participate in this race? I had repeated my request to the boss twice over 3 weeks, and each time being told “…NO!” The third time, I approached the boss with a different request style "You’ve got a problem, because I really want to do this." To which he gave me the OK, but stated “Everyone in this department gets one screw up and this is yours!”

The goal was to get battery powered electric vehicles into car dealer show rooms, for which the automobile industry had to start building EV’s. Having little understanding of how the car makers promote their products, I looked through magazines such as Motor Trend. It wasn't long before my search had proven to me that efficiency or environmentally “saving the planet” didn’t sell cars.

Performance, styling and image these things inspire a sale. Mostly performance was the hurdle for the EV to create market excitement.

My inspiration for an electric race car came from Henry Ford[4]. In the book, "Ford: the Men and the Machine"[5], the evolution of the early years of the automobile was documented by races, and in the case of Henry Ford it created a pathway for raising the funds needed for his new companies. These early races were reported in the press, and any claims put forth by the early entrepreneurs were put before the public in a competitive test of speed and distance.

So me, having no past automotive experience, decided to follow in the footsteps of a successful automobile industry pioneer. Do we have a race car? With that question my boss’s fears in an instant returned a few weeks after the race. A company senior executive was reading a national newspaper about how the race in Phoenix won by an APS[6] race car, and immediately increased funding for the whole department of research and development.
The boss was relieved and happy the executive level consensus was a positive, good reflection on the company and its values. Just as in the case of Henry Ford, the story of the race and the car was reported in newspapers (east coast) and magazines.

Other electric utilities began asking APS executive management about the "Electric Race Car" team. My “everyone get one screw-up and this is yours”-moment was a public relations hit, and other electric utilities began showing interest in wanting to join.

Public interest in electric cars at the time was driven by several factors. The Desert Storm[7] offensive against Saddam Hussain[8] had been initiated in August of 1990 and sending American troops into the Middle East had raised public awareness of the amount of oil being imported. Oil Imports were high, amounting to about 6 million barrels per day of crude[9]. Only a few years had passed since OPEC[10] blocked shipments of petroleum into the USA from member countries, creating the energy crisis of the 1970’s. Public support was very high to find a way of eliminating the dependence on imported petroleum and there was general confidence that science would find the alternative to imported oil. That alternative would be electricity, whose national night time capacity was immense and cheap. The race in Phoenix was proof that America could rise and overcome the challenge, and the story of the Solar and Electric 500 was widely covered.

It would require a different kind of race car, the new 1991 Honda CRX chassis. It was small, lightweight, and with a low coefficient of drag of 0.19 (excellent). The CRX was perfect for an EV.

The visionary design for the EV Race car came from Mike Cheiky, the founder of DEMI Automotive Inc.[12]. He was performing research on a zinc-air battery at the time[13].

Bob Scheffler, a friend from Southern California Edison Company (SCE), was interested in DEMI but was concerned that a “Race Car” was too radical an idea for a regulated electric utility. Electric Utilities have a unique culture which does not embrace change or risk taking, but typically gravitates to “collusion with each other,” which is forbidden in other competitive industries. Hence if another electric utility is doing it, then it’s ok to join in!
Bob and I used this technique in our respective companies I said, “SCE wants to do it”, while Bob reported that “APS wants to do it!"

The strategy worked, and true to NASCAR traditions the first two logos put on the DEMI EV race car were APS and SCE. Since neither utility wished to go into the car manufacturing business, it was an essential to have Honda Motor Company become an official sponsor of the race car [11].

Mike Cheiky took the responsibility of approaching Honda to get their participation, which turned out to be a very significant undertaking. The Japanese culture in Honda required consideration and respectful requests for approval at an ever increasing executive level.

Considerable time elapsed while the request rose to higher in Honda Motor Company executive management. The slow pondering was partially due to no understanding of battery electric drive trains as they would apply to road vehicles, and although very formidable in Formula One Racing (Acura) and took great pride in its success, the EV was different in that Honda had no product or plans for such.

The decision to participate came from the very top of Honda. Resources were approved to support the race, with the acknowledgment that Honda would provide limited technical support, if any, in the drive train. Honda facilitated proving grounds in Torrance, California at which the DEMI EV's weight and balance could be modeled, and backup vehicles provided.

The third logo on race car that won the Solar and Electric 500 was HONDA.

-Ray Hobbs