The Plug-In Compact

Ever since the last Baker Electric hummed down Main Street, dowager at the tiller, rose in the bud vase, esoteric autophiles have been yearning for the return of the stately "bucket of volts" that was as quiet as a railroad watch and almost as cheap to operate.

Last week an enterprising young man named Barry Stuart, of Kalamazoo. Mich., was showing off the pilot model of a brand-new electric family car. Designed to sell for around $1,600, the Stuart is a boxy but commodious fiber-glass creation driven by a 4-h.p. motor, will hold two adults, two kids, and lots of groceries. It will go 40 miles at a safe-and-sane 35 m.p.h. on its small boat-trailer-size wheels, and its eight 6-volt batteries may be recharged overnight simply by plugging the whole thing into the garage socket. The cost of operation (including depreciation on the car itself) is estimated by Stuart to be around 4-c- a mile, as opposed to about 8-c- a mile for the standard gasoline compact.

There have been other entries in the electric-car field in recent years, though none have caused much anxiety in Detroit. Short range, slow speed, lack of power on the hills, together with high price, have kept most of them in the experimental stage. But Barry Stuart, 29, thinks his car is the answer--provided that people do not expect too much from it. Requests for dealerships have come in by the score; 20 have been accepted. Says Stuart: "I'm convinced there is a real market for a second car for limited town or suburban driving. I don't recommend it for thruways or turnpikes; it's an errand car."

Stuart also sees his car as a partial answer to the smog problem, since it burns no fuel, hence has no exhaust. "Some day," observes Stuart, "unless we turn off the fumes, we may be legislated into using nonexhaust transportation. It's better to make a start now."

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