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From the beginning of his academic career, Sperling has focused on technologies, fuels and policies for improving the transportation system, environment and society. His doctoral research at UC Berkeley focused on alternatives to petroleum-based fuels. He studied and discarded options such as ethanol from corn, synthetic fuels and methanol. In the late 1980s, at the instigation of his graduate students, he began looking more closely at electric vehicles. Surprisingly, electric cars proved to have dramatic environmental benefits.

Early in discussions about the environmental impact of electric cars, people worried about the increase in power plant emissions due to increased electricity demand from electric cars. Two of his graduate students, Mark Delucchi, now a staff researcher at the institute, and Michael Q. Wang, now a senior researcher at Argonne National Laboratory, investigated what are called "cradle-to-grave" emissions, a big-picture look beyond the cars to the power plants supplying the electricity.

In terms of air quality, California relies on relatively "clean" power sources--hydroelectric dams and nuclear power plants. Of the power from fossil fuels, virtually all comes from natural gas, and those smokestacks are cleaner in California because of strict emission standards for the power plants themselves. For each gasoline car replaced by an electric car, Delucchi and Wang found about a 99 percent reduction in carbon monoxide and hydro-carbons. They also found a 50 to 90 percent reduction in nitrogen oxides, which are precursors to urban ozone pollution.

In other states, more of the electricity comes from coal-fired power plants. Delucchi and Wang found that the air would still be cleaner with electric cars, but the net benefits would not be as dramatic as they would be in California (or as in some other countries, such as France, where two-thirds of the electricity comes from nuclear power).

For years, automakers insisted no one wanted electric cars, because they did not go as far or as fast as gasoline cars. But Tom Turrentine and Ken Kurani, who joined the institute as graduate students in Sperling's group and have both continued as research staff, reframed the questions, integrated survey techniques from other fields, such as anthropology. They designed a study that also educated drivers about the different characteristics of electric cars.

The only publicly available study showing a significant market for electric cars, the findings revealed a near-term market as large as 7 to 10 percent (compared to car company estimates of less than 1 percent). Many people surveyed found the shorter driving range to be only a minor disadvantage. People in the study most likely to buy electric cars usually owned two or more cars and could easily swap vehicles on days when the electric-car driver need to take a long trip. In fact, many people expressed a surprisingly strong dislike of gasoline stations. For them, avoiding gas stations altogether more than compensated for the limited driving range.

In the UC Davis electric car market study, Turrentine and Kurani found that an electric car makes a good second or third vehicle for a household. Take a gasoline car to the mountains for the weekend, and use the electric car for commuting, shopping, errands and evenings out around town.

These findings do not surprise students of electric car history. University of Arizona technology anthropologist Michael Schiffer analyzed the early history of cars to find out why gasoline cars came to dominate the market over electric cars at the turn of the century. He found that women, who used cars for short shopping trips around town and to drive out to the country club to play tennis, preferred electric cars. Henry Ford's wife was one such woman.

Men, on the other hand, wanted a machine associated with power and adventure and long drives into the country. Wealthy households that could afford two cars generally had a gasoline and an electric car in the garage. Gasoline cars predominated in middle-class households that could afford only one car and that relied on the men to make most of the income and important family decisions, Schiffer found.

Two years ago, no one acknowledged a significant market for electric cars. Now, car companies are starting to accept the premise that the different attributes might be preferred by some people. As for the power issue, drivers of electric cars like the General Motors EV1 are finding that an electric car has full and smooth acceleration power from a complete stop, unlike gas cars, which are much slower in getting up to speed, points out Tom Cackette, deputy director of the California Air Resources Board.

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Although Sperling and the institute have become associated with electric cars, Sperling tries to avoid an advocacy role for any one transportation option.

"I'm looking at issues and technologies in terms of long-term potential to improve the world," Sperling says. "I didn't think the zero-emission vehicle mandate was a great policy in and of itself. It's too rigid and too focused on air quality. But I think it sets us on a path in the right direction. It will not generate any real air quality benefits in the short term, but for me that's not the point."

Sperling is looking beyond that. Electric cars are a good first step that opens up a world of opportunities. "The transportation system has become homogeneous, like a monoculture," he says. "One of my central beliefs is that we need to pursue policies and strategies that allow us to test different technologies and transportation systems to see what might work better. A more diverse transportation system will allow more benign and efficient technologies to flourish."

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