Green car dealerships popping up around U.S.

Eco-savvy entrepreneurs are making it easier for car shoppers — upset by rising oil prices, global warming and world politics — to find, buy and drive away in a green vehicle that consumes less or no gasoline. At least 16 green car dealerships — one-stop shops where customers can compare and test-drive multiple alternative vehicles — have opened in 10 states, from Hawaii to Maine.

Customers will see more niche dealerships in two to five years, even though the obstacles are monumental, said Sebastian Blanco, editor of AutoblogGreen. For mainstream consumers, today’s green vehicles are too inconvenient, too expensive or just too weird. Car loans and insurance are expensive or unobtainable. Perhaps most challenging, consumers need to get informed and comfortable. But those issues will get sorted out, he said.

“That is what makes them so exciting. Even though these things are so complicated, there is such a push,” said Blanco. “People are so active in taking things into their own hands. They know they can make their own fuel. That’s important to these people, especially in those remote areas. … You might not be able to go in there and sell 500 cars a year. But a small dealership that can work with customers one-on-one and be an education center— that is a green car dealership of the future.”

That’s Ron Gompertz’s dream. He picked Bozeman, Mont., a town of about 33,000 people that gets roughly 70 inches of snow each year. Despite no car business experience, Gompertz opened his alternative car company, Eco Auto Inc. a year ago because he believed the town’s outdoor lovers, college students, baby boomers and gadget geeks could learn to like electric cars and compact fuel-efficient cars. Eco Auto’s latest experiment is converting a 2008 Subaru Forester into a highway-speed, zero-emission, winter-ready, all-electric, all-wheel-drive vehicle, which should be ready in early next year, he said.

“In Montana, it is big sky county and it is big truck country. … This is a place where people trust their vehicles to get them through the harshest weather. They forget that people in Sweden have snow and drive small cars, too,” Gompertz said. “People want to put a plug in their homes and free themselves. In Montana, they pay 10 percent of their income on gas. There is anger.”

Consumers are angry because gas prices have doubled in the past five years, said Jim Kliesch, a senior vehicles analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Yet fuel economy — how far your car will run on a gallon of gas— has remained on average the same for 20 years even though the technology for more efficiency has existed for years, Kliesch said. Add it all up, and it means that Americans spend $10 billion more every month on gasoline because of preventable poor fuel efficiency. Green car dealerships will multiply because consumers want choices, he said.

“If you have consumers that are reverting to buying electric bicycles, that is a sign that vehicles on major showroom floors are not meeting customer needs,” Kliesch said. “For everyone customer that goes to those (alternative) dealerships and finds something, there are a hundred customers that settle at the regular dealerships despite the fact that they want cleaner, more fuel-efficient vehicles.”

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