Green car dealerships popping up around U.S.

The Green Car Company of Kirkland, a Seattle-area dealership that reinvented itself in 2005, sees an opportunity to grow. The company’s three founders, Susan Fahnestock, Don Fahnestock and Greg Rock, are courting investors and national talent who can open multiple West Coast locations and create a high-profile advertising campaign. When customers enter Green Car Company stores, they will find electric neighborhood vehicles, full-speed electric motorcycles, used hybrids, electric bicycles and refurbished full-size biodiesel vehicles, including popular biodiesel trucks and minivans. Whatever the latest and greatest alternative vehicles are, the Green Car Company will carry them, Rock said.

“There are a lot of specialized green car dealers doing one car group or another,” Rock said. “We think it is important to carry all of the groups and styles.”

Putting a premium on education, the Green Car Company created a Green Car Scorecard to help customers compare vehicles based on global warming emissions, fossil fuel depletion and air pollution. The company also launched a Green Car University Web site featuring related articles, books, videos and maps.

“It’s a rapidly growing market,” said Rock. “The big head start we have is we have been doing this for three years, where a lot of these other businesses are starting today. … It is a big, bright future.”

Exponential growth is possible, said Jim Motavalli, author of “Forward Drive: The Race to Build Clean Cars for the Future” and editor of E/Environmental Magazine. He noted that a recent JD Power survey estimated that hybrid sales would grow by 268 percent from 2005 to 2012, and a Wall Street Journal Online/Harris poll found that a third of new car buyers would consider an alternative fuel vehicle.

What’s holding alternative dealerships back is a lack of full-size, full-speed, multipurpose green vehicles that mainstream consumers will embrace, but they’re being developed, Motavalli said. Full-size, full-speed affordable electric cars, for instance, could appear within five years.

“The consumer is going to have more choices,” Motavalli said. “It makes a lot of sense — turning a dealership into a supermarket of green vehicles.”

For green dealers, the challenge is that their stock is either used or not mainstream, said Mike Millikin, editor of the Green Car Congress Web site. As the mature automobile companies produce more hybrids, diesels and electric cars, these new vehicles will appear in the traditional dealerships and lure consumers back.

“The multi-platform, multi-vendor green car sales companies have a niche opportunity that will gradually constrict over time, leaving them essentially on a par with the types of independent used car dealers we see now, but in about 15 years,” Millikin said.

In Montana, Gompertz is convinced his industry will thrive. Green cars are the “next boom” because they tap into what people value — independence, innovation and freedom. Some people believe that rising gas prices, oil shortages or government regulations are inevitable and that green vehicles are the way out, he said.

“We love cars. We love driving. We don't want to lose the fun and independence of having your own car,” Gompertz said. “This is exciting, this is innovating … and you can make money doing this. What can be more American?”

More information:

• AutoblogGreen
• Eco Auto Inc.
• Forward Drive
• Green Car Congress
• The Green Car Company
• Green Car University

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