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PA blocks electric car sales, says builder

BG Automotive says it's starting production of its electric cars at an undisclosed location in Philadelphia. For now it's export-only: Owner Barry Bernstein, a steel trader, says Pennsylvania is dragging its feet on a law that would make the cars street-legal here, as they are in other states.

    by Joseph N. DiStefano
    Published 

  Steel trader Barry D. Bernsten says his company, BG Automotive Group Ltd., has started assembling the first of its street-ready electric cars, in a small facility at an undisclosed address in Philadelphia.
  He says he's looking at three larger sites -- at the old Jones Apparel complex in Bucks County, near Woodhaven Rd. and Roosevelt Blvd. in Northeast Philadelphia, and in the state-tax-free zone near Philadelphia International Airport -- to begin larger-scale production. Joe Alymer from PIDC and Ken Ortiz of the state's economic development office confirmed Bernsten has made inquiries about sites and low-cost state loans. BG is "hiring 100 workers in 2008 and 200+ in 2009," he said.
  The first working BG cars will be ready in October, Bernsten says. But he's concerned these made-in-Pennsylvania cars will have to be exported to other states -- because the Pennsylvania Senate, with just a few days left until it breaks for its election recess, has bottled up Act 152, which would make low-power cars street-legal in the Commonwealth.
  Police in New Jersey and other states where electrics are legal have expressed fears they're not strong enough to withstand collisions. Bernsten says that danger applies to the "golf-cart-like" vehicles made by other manufacturers. "But we're using steel bodies," made by Asian automakers, with batteries and instruments from U.S. suppliers, Bernsten said.
  Bernsten says he and Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Bucks, have been trying to get the support of appropriations chairman Gib Armstrong, R-Lancaster, without success. Armstrong's office didn't return a call.
 

    JN
    Joseph N. DiStefano