Electric Lazyland : Electric Cars in Houston and a response by Rick Ehrlich of Houston Electric Car

by Alex Wukman

Erik Ibarra walks into Coffee Groundz on a Saturday morning in his customary black polo embroidered with the Rev Houston logo and a ball cap. Ibarra and his brother, Justin Jones, started Rev Houston in April 2008--the same month that Ibarra and his brother Sean Ibarra accepted a settlement from Harris County.
In 2004 the brothers sued the county and the sheriff’s department, stating that their civil rights were violated when sheriff’s deputies stormed their home, arrested them and seized film after they photographed a deputy during a drug raid at a neighbor’s home. The suit was settled for $1.7 million.
Ibarra says that he was attending a sports event when he saw electric shuttles (they look like stretch golf carts) and became inspired, so he and Jones decided to start a company transporting people through downtown and midtown for tips. They went before Mayor Bill White and City Council to explain what they were doing.
“The mayor said ‘We look forward to permitting you. We think that plug in electric cars are the wave of the future,’” says Ibarra.
Six weeks after Rev Houston started, though, they received a ticket for operating a taxi without a license. Ibarra feels that the city has cowed to pressure from the taxi companies.
“Taxi companies feel that that we are such a threat that we have to be ticketed,” says Ibarra as he takes a sip from his coffee, “but the last thing we wanted to do when we started this company was compete with cabs.”
Raymond Turner, president of Yellow Cab Houston, states that he and his company have not put undue pressure on the city to ticket Ibarra.
“All we’ve done is ask the city to enforce existing ordinance, these vehicles are clearly vehicles for hire,” says Turner. Since Ibarra is running a company that hires out vehicles, he should be held to the same standard as any other taxi company. “The ordinance requires things like a sign on the top, a meter and doors,” says Turner.
None of Ibarra’s electric cars have signs marking them as taxis; nor do they have meters, or even doors. Ibarra feels that they don’t need meters because they don’t charge their riders a fare--they only accept tips. Not everybody agrees with him, though. Tina Paez, the city’s Deputy Director of Administration and Regulatory Affairs told the Houston Chronicle that since Rev Houston’s drivers accept tips, they are taxis and fall under the taxi ordinance.
The ordinance also requires that taxi cabs have fire extinguishers, something Ibarra finds ridiculous.
“We don’t even have any flammable fuel onboard,” says Ibarra.
Turner isn’t concerned with the fact that Ibarra’s drivers use electric cars, he just wants them to follow the rules.
“We’re not out trying to make life difficult for people, [but] the Rev Houston vehicles look like taxi cabs to us and to the city,” says Turner. Since the city has decided to regulate the taxi cab industry they need to regulate every taxi vehicle—electric or not. To Turner, the issue isn’t about the city favoring big businesses over small or not encouraging green vehicles; it’s about being equal under the law. “If the city is going to take this position that they are going to regulate this industry they have to regulate the entire industry.”
Ibarra counters that being equal under the law isn’t possible when the system is set against you. Ibarra stated that getting a taxi permit in Houston is difficult, because the permit price isn’t sent by the city, it is set by the cab companies. The barriers to entry are too high to start a cab company,.
Turner is unconvinced.
“Without a permit,” he says, “Rev Houston is flagrantly breaking the law without getting punished. It’s like not ticketing every third person that runs a red light, just because.”
The thing is, Rev Houston’s drivers are getting ticketed. Ibarra and his drivers have been ticketed over 15 times this year, with citations ranging from $150 to $200. Paez also told the Chronicle that the city’s regulatory investigators have been instructed to ticket Rev Houston’s vehicles on sight. An attempt was made to contact Paez, but she had not responded by press time.
For Rick Ehrlich and Dale Brooks of the Houston Electric Automobile Association (HEAA) the lack of interest from the city is nothing new. Ehrlich runs an electric car dealership a block behind Warehouse Live and has lobbied the city to embrace 100 percent electric vehicles for some time.
“Every city that’s worth a shit has some electric cars in their fleet,” said Ehrlich.
According to James Tillman, an employee in the city’s General Services Division, the city does have 550 gasoline electric hybrids in its fleet, which is the third largest hybrid fleet in the nation. A July 2008 press release from the mayor’s office stated that the city aims to have 1,500 hybrid vehicles in its fleet by 2010. While 550 hybrid vehicles in the city’s fleet is impressive, for Ehrlich it’s nothing to crow about.
The hesitation comes from the fact that there are over 12,000 vehicles in the city’s fleet, approximately 2,000 of which are passenger cars. According to Ehrlich, the city has a written policy to replace 10 to 15 percent of their passenger car fleet every year.
“They are supposed to get most economic car to operate, and for the past several years, the most economic car to operate have been hybrids,” Ehrlich wrote in an e-mail. He added that if the city had not bought hybrids, it “would have been a clear violation of long time policy.”
However, according to a description of a program posted by Tillman on the Project Get Ready website, the city is finally joining the electric car revolution. Tillman wrote that the City of Houston “will commit to purchasing over 300 all-electric vehicles for delivery in late 2010.”
Currently, the city has a pilot-program in partnership with Reliant Energy in which 15 Toyota hybrids will be converted to plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles. The converted vehicles will then be used as vehicles in the city’s fleet.
Project Get Ready is a different program, run by the Rocky Mountain Institute, that partners cities throughout the country with private companies to create the infrastructure needed for plug in electric vehicles. Tillman’s description states that while studying the converted Toyotas, the city will build “a 1:1 charging infrastructure for these vehicles and two home charging stations,” and that the vehicles will be equipped with monitoring devices and “multiple charge station vendors will contribute to city owned facilities.” Tillman goes on to state that after the initial roll out of the pilot program, the city will begin installation of 100 charging stations around the area, in city-owned facilities such as libraries and parks. The city’s plan also relies on persuading other governmental agencies and municipalities—as well as non-governmental organizations like the Greater Houston Partnership, private businesses, and real estate developer—to install charging stations and commit to purchasing electric vehicles.
“The city will also explore creating level-three charging station infrastructure on the interstate highways between major cities in Texas,” wrote Tillman. Tillman’s description stated that the City of Houston plans on working with major cities to ensure residents can “drive their electric vehicles from town to town and have places to charge.”
Tillman recognizes the inherent difficulty of convincing the population of the petrochemical capital of the country that electric cars are the way to go.
“The challenge of bringing electric vehicles to the city [of Houston] is more than just creating an infrastructure of charging stations,” he writes on the website, “it is overcoming a mindset.”
Unfortunately Tillman’s program description has no timetable for implementation or budget attached to it.


Response by Rick Ehrlich of Houston Electric Car

It is great whenever one of our Houston newspapers writes about electric car use in Houston, and we appreciate that Free Press Houston published such an article in September 2009.
At the same time, we do point out a few things seen differently in our perspective- re REV unofficial Taxi company--- the Yellow Cab CEO's statements seemed very disingenuous--- of course REV would put signs and meters on their taxis IF the City would allow them to be taxis, the real problem is the City doesn't allow it, and needs to change a half century old rather corrupt law still requiring internal combustion engines in Houston taxis, passed to keep the bike and horse-drawns out. And on the City government's progress with e-cars, really there isn't any. Many people confuse hybrids (such as the Toyota Prius) with all electric cars-- but they are very different, the hybrid guzzles gas at about half the rate of a good SUV, while the actual electric car NEVER uses gas, period. A chart in the FPH article made Houston appear to be USA's leader in electric cars, actually it is the leader in hybrids which is commendable, but Houston is tied for last place so far in electric cars, with zero. The August entry of Houston's city government into the "Project Get Ready" website sounds very promising, and we strongly hope it is more than a futuristic expression of something like a vacation on Venus. While the City's James Tillman sounds quite sincere saying they absolutely are buying 300 highway speed electric cars next year, readers should know: (a) there is no such highway speed e-car today except the prohibitive Tesla, (b) nobody really knows when they will exist, or be priced within reason, (c) ordinarily the City must get multiple bids before they can buy anything, (d) 300 cars would be an unusually huge order for the City for any kind of car, (e) none of the Mayoral candidates had heard of this development in recently conducted interviews by the HEAA, and (f) only within the last several months, Mayor White declined trying a pilot program for just a few electric cars in the fleet according to Councilman and Candidate Peter Brown, who is also head of the City's Sustainable Growth Committee. Speaking of the HEAA's interviews, your reporter was given the summary and detail of them maybe too late to include, but after fair and meticulous interviews of all Mayoral candidates, Annise Parker was endorsed by HEAA as by far the most knowledgeable and progressive candidate on renewable energy and e-cars, and she actually signed a pledge of action on this, as reported in the Houston Chronicle online 9/1/09. We do hope the City government will be a booster of the only clean cars that exist in reality or theory, the ones which make no exhaust pollution--- all-electric cars. They are clean, they are cheaper to operate, they help towards US' energy independence goal, they won't hurt the oil companies one bit, they are the future.

Very truly,

Rick Ehrlich, GM
Houston Electric Cars
www.houstonelectriccars.net