The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California • 64

-14 Sunday, June 21, 1992 SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER A ction of the San Francnco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle anJrancbco ft JOHN C. DVORAK ASK DVORAK on he oectnc Swil do the job." Both the board and the California Energy Commission agree the state has enough electrical capacity to support several million electric vehicles if charging is done primarily at off-peak hours. The load-leveling effect might even reduce costs of power for daytime users. Even if you have to use fossil fuel instead of renewable resources to generate electricity, Martin says, the power plant emissions are a small fraction of the equivalent pollution generated by a standard gasoline engine. But the mass-produced cars that will meet the state's standard are just entering the prototype stage.

The Big Three domestic carmakers Ford, General Motors and Chrysler have been building sample cars or light vans, with plans for mass production in time for the 1998 deadline. The ZEV regulations apply to any company that sells at least 3,000 cars a year in the state, so major importers have also announced plans for electrics. Mass production of cars will mean at least 100,000 of them whirring on state highways by end of decade By Steve Rosenthal SPECIAL TO THE EXAMINER The few hundred electric care and light trucks now plying California streets will soon have plenty of company. Driven in large part by government efforts to fight noxious emissions from gas and diesel-powered vehicles, automakers are gearing up to put at least 100,000 more electrics on the road here by the end of the decade. Environmentalists and small-scale makers of electric vehicles say that even standard cars and vans converted to electric propulsion already make sense for most households.

"If you have two or more cars," says Gary Starr, president of Solar Electric in Santa Rosa, "one ought to be an electric." For the average short-range trip, say EV proponents, electric vehicles are cleaner, cheaper over the long run and already have enough range for everyday driving. With an average daily distance I traveled of under 25 miles, most commuters and shoppers could make the switch with no trouble. "I commute to work in an elec 4 i i rYh-v 1 4'f 'liw: i ''Sir'' if-'' -v -1 1 EXAMINERFRAN ORTIZ in Santa Rosa, checks out the batteries under the hood of one of his cars. RAM disks versus hard disks 'm in the market for a hard disk and a friend of mine who is an engineer tells me to wait for something called a silicon hard disk. Not wanting to sound stupid, I said nothing.

What is a silicon hard disk and why should I wait? A. Andrews It's solid state mass storage. Instead of a spinning hard disk you have a box of RAM chips. It's an idea that floats in and out of the market. There is always someone who likes the speedy memory chip-based storage device.

Unfortunately, these things cost a fortune. RAM chips are cheap, but not that cheap. An attempt to reduce the price was made by Texas Instruments and a few other companies with their so-called bubble memory mass storage devices. They too were expensive and too hard to implement. In the early days of the micro business Compu-Pro and a few other board manu facturers designed special RAM crammed boards to be used as disk drives.

Software was soon designed for almost every machine that would allow the computer to set aside some of its internal memory to act as a RAM disk. To the user, this RAM disk seems to be just another disk except the data transfer speed would be three or four times faster than the fastest little hard disk. I have a simple question. Why don't newspapers join ine zutn century ana go on line with a computerized version? M. Markham They've tried with something called videotex.

In various parts of the country and over the years vendors have promoted the idea that newspapers should provide a graphics-oriented videotex service. They've all flopped. The biggest flops have been by the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain in Miami the system was called Viewtron and gathered less than 20,000 subscribers. A few years ago Times-Mirror shut down its Gate way project in Southern California. The idea behind videotex is that you can quickly access information you want without having to flip through endless pages of a newspa per.

Unfortunately, the developers of these defunct systems believe that the user is an idiot and needs lots of pretty pictures, graphics and an overly simplistic and not-too-powerful user interface. On the other hand, services like Genie from General Electric, Compuserve and the Source forgo the pretty pictures and offer a text only service with a complicated but learnable interface designed for efficiency and power. I realize that I'm asking this before I receive any gifts, but I minx my girimena is going to buy me some computer software and (since she doesn't read your column) I think she bought it for the wrong computer. What is the return policy at most stores? K. Jensen A few years ago, you couldn't get a store to take back un wanted or bad software.

Nowadays, however, it should be no problem to exchange one package for another as long as it remains in the shrink wrap. Even if it's been opened, most stores will take it back and either exchange it with their distributor or re-wrap it. Send auestmns or cnmmenta C. Dvorak, co San Francisco Examiner, P.O. Box 7260, San Francisco, CA 94120.

petitive with other cars in their class," says Bill Ott, GM's director of corporate communications for the Western United States. Electric vehicles will require less costly fuel. By the year 2000, the Energy Commission figures show EVs with a 4-1 fuel cost advantage over gasoline and a nearly 2-1 advantage over natural gas. Utilities such as and timing is "purely coincidental," adding that VESA must have misunderstood Intel's level of interest in VESA's technology. "We weren't really a part of the committee at all, and we never 1 ZA.

A 1 Better battery sought The Big Three along with the Palo Alto-based Electric Power Research Institute are also partners in the U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium. It's a $1 billion venture to develop the better storage batteries needed to extend driving range beyond the current 50-150 miles of most EVs and cut the $500 to $2,000 cost of replacement batteries. Some local competition may be in the works, too. Two consortiums of California-based EV producers have been tentatively awarded $2 million in state funds to use as a matching grant for a federal program to support new vehicle design.

And a November ballot measure may call for $100 million in bonds to turn some of California's unused aerospace and electronics factories to EV production. Supporters say such production would not only keep jobs in Califor-. nia, but it should quickly cut EV prices. Until mass production begins, costs for the current prototype models from major companies are still high from about $50,000 up to $200,000 each for some of the van-style light-utility vehicles now being tested. Prices for electric conversion vehicles can be much lower.

According to the Electric Auto Association in Belmont, more than a. VALLEY ment VESA plans to make at the show Monday. And they're irate that Intel is choosing the same day to introduce technology that competes with VESA's, a move they say could paralyze PC buying decisions for thousands of companies. The technology at issue here is called "local bus," a technique for building faster PCs that analysts say will become a multimillion dollar business over the next couple years. Last November, VESA formed a committee of 60 competing hardware companies so they could agree on a common way to build future local bus PCs and components.

Some kind of standard is necessary because, without a common blueprint, components from various vendors won't work together. Until now, virtually everyone expected VESA's so-called VL-Bus technology to be the standard for building local bus products. But just two weeks before VESA was planning to announce what it came up with, Intel floored the VESA local bus committee by saying it won't support the technology after all. In a letter sent to VESA local bus committee officials, Intel stated that supportinESA's local I i i tric vehicle," says Dan Fields, a physician at Kaiser Hospital in Sacramento. He drives 23 miles between work and home on the freeway.

Besides saving time and money on refueling, maintenance and repairs, he says, for him driving an electric is "part of health maintenance for the planet." In California, there may be no choice. The state Air Resources Board says auto exhaust causes half the state's smog problems, especially in urban areas. Automakers get '98 deadline Air quality regulations will require all major automakers to offer so-called Zero-Emission Vehicles (ZEVs) for at least 2 percent of their cars sold in California in 1998, rising to 10 percent of them in 2003. "The regulations don't require electric vehicles," says Jerry Martin of the air resources board. "But so far there's nothing else that will GINA SMITH INSIDE SILICON -If 1 f.

I 5 1 Intel's trip to New York will be rocky OOKS LIKE Intel's going to have some explaining to do at this week's PC Expo com- I puter trade show in New York. A bunch of people who belong to San Jose's Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) say they're hopping mad: They feel like Intel purposely waited until the last minute to back out of supporting jp big technology gnnounce- 1 Gary Starr, president of Solar Electric dozen companies in the Bay Area convert individual vehicles or sell conversion kits for do-it-yourselfers at prices from about $5,000 and up. Solar Electric boasts 70 cars a year of production converted electrics. It charges about $18,000 a vehicle. When the production lines start rolling, electric cars "will be com bus technology "was no longer in Intel's best interest." And sources say it went on to suggest that VESA and Intel should work together to minimize the negative press impact that might arise from the decision.

Good luck, Intel. Because now that Intel plans to announce a competing group that includes hardware heavyweights like IBM, Compaq, NCR and DEC, custom- ere and investors (and yes, the press) are going to wonder what in the world is going on. Not surprisingly, the people who work for VESA are hurt, confused and angry. "It's a political nightmare. We're extremely surprised they're doing this," said Ron McCabe, chairman for the committee and a product manager at VESA member Tseng Labs.

"Well still make money and Intel will still make money, but instead of one standard, there will now be two. And it's the customer who's going to get hurt in the end." Some VESA members we spoke to go even farther "We feel that Intel used and abused us," said one, speaking anonymously. "Intel started attending our meetings in February and managed to learn all about our technology while telling us almost nothing about theirs. Now, all of a sudden they have a competing product. Just look at the timing it's a power play." But Intel claims its choice of i Sacramento Municipal Utilities District already feature special lower off-peak rates for recharging EV batteries.

State tax credits can also hero. Buyers of certified electric vehicles or conversions who get the proper forms from the California Energy Commission are eligible for a reduction in their state income tax. committee are upset. It looks like an assertive way of setting them up for a fall without giving them much time to react," added Ken Lowe, a senior analyst with Dataquest Corp. in San Jose.

"But the thing i is, Intel has a ten-to-one advantage over the people in the VESA com- mittee, which is not dominated by major companies." Intel's PCI Spe cial Interest Group, he added, reads like a Who's Who of major computer players. But VESA says not to write off its standard so fast "The thing to remember is that Intel's announce ment is premature. PCI is still just a blueprint, just a piece of paper," said Warren Lee, a member of the VESA local bus committee, and president of a Texas hardware company, Alpha Research. "No one can build anything based on PCI right now but we have many companies who plan to release products based on our standard over the next couple months. "For the user, it's going to come down to this should I get a local bus system now, or should I wait? And we think people aren't going to wait." Intel obviously thinks they will.

And now, it's up to the market to decide. Gina Smith is a senior writer and editor with PCComputing magazine, in Foster City. You can reach her at her MCI mail box, $96-7573. maue any cummiunenui, responded Mike Bailey, who is Intel's PCI marketing manager as well as the man who has represented Intel in several VESA local bus committee meetings. "We simply feel that our method is the best way to fill the industry's requirements for local bus technology, and that this was the right time to introduce it." Moreover, Bailey said VESA was well aware that Intel was working on its own local bus design technique called the Peripheral Component Interface specification throughout its participation on the VESA local bus committee.

He said Intel was working with VESA to make Intel's standard compatible with VESA's, but he wouldn't comment about what, if anything, changed Intel's mind. Industry analysts were stunned to learn of Intel's plans last week. "This is going to be a royal battle," commented John Peddy, publisher of the PC Graphics Report in Oakland. "It's going to confuse customers and it'll especially rattle people who've already made plans based on what VESA's doing. What Intel's doing is raising the fear-uncertainty-doubt factor." "I see why people on the VESA 4.