Oct. 22--COURTESY OF an Upland reader, I got a ride in what may be the car of the future, a plug-in electric vehicle.

The BMW Mini E is in the testing phase and isn't for sale. But Lois Sicking was driving one. She's an air pollution engineer for the California Air Resources Board and is on the panel writing regulations for all-electric vehicles.

To see a plug-in electric vehicle, it helps to know someone with (ahem) connections.

Sicking e-mailed me that she and her power car would be at the Starbucks in downtown Claremont on Sunday afternoon if I wanted to see it. She had the vehicle on loan for a week.

"I was one of the first to get to work the day they asked for volunteers," she told me.

Sicking had commuted home with the car and was taking it on errands, including to church. It was due back Thursday.

The Mini -- like a Mini Cooper with an "E" on the hood -- has already been featured in this newspaper when Pomona City Hall got two on loan as part of BMW's testing program. Various council members have been tooling around town in one of them.

As it might be a long wait before one of them invites me for a ride in their electric car, or out to a power lunch, I was happy to take Sicking up on her offer.

She got in behind the wheel and I rode shotgun -- not that there were any other seats, what with the battery filling the back seat compartment.

"Press the button and it's on," Sicking said, pushing a button

on the dash.

The dash lights up, but the car makes no sound, because there's no engine.

Sicking took me for a spin up Indian Hill Boulevard, demonstrating how the car almost never needs braking. Once the driver's foot is off the accelerator, the car's "regenerative braking" system kicks in and it stops almost immediately, sending power back to the battery as it does.

Her husband of six weeks, Ralph Dieter, an economics professor, is one of those drivers who hunches over the wheel and both accelerates and brakes hard, she explained.

"He thinks this car validates his whole approach to driving," Sicking said.

Like the Mini E, Sicking is a dynamo herself, full of energy and good humor. The native Texan is on an Air Resources Board team in El Monte collaborating with automakers' engineers to solve various problems associated with an all-electric vehicle.

Those include lightening the batteries' weight, keeping them cool and extending their life.

"It's always been my dream to work in air pollution," Sicking said.

Then El Monte must be ideal.

Several automakers will have plug-in electric vehicles on the market in late 2011 or early 2012, Sicking told me. The Mini E, whose batteries run on 120-volt household current, has a range of about 100 miles per charge. A car that gets 300 miles is said to be within reach.

Price may be an object at first -- the figure $50,000 is being batted around -- but the price will come down.

"We believe this is what we will all be driving in 10 to 15 years," Sicking said as we crossed Foothill Boulevard back to the Village. "This takes OPEC and pokes 'em in the eye."

Thanks for the ride, Lois, and the glimpse of our collective future.

BEING IN charge of supplies for a military unit must not have the cachet of yore. At Tuesday's Chino council meeting, a Chino woman named Chantae Fredinburg was recognized, while home on leave, for her U.S. Army service. She said she's a supply sergeant.

That led Mayor Dennis Yates to recall how when he was in the service he buddied up to the supply sergeant in hopes of extra goodies.

"You must be very popular," Yates said.

Fredinburg replied ruefully: "Everyone hates me."

MORE CHINO: During the meeting's public comment period, regular speaker Joe Molamphy advised that his next statement would be "sort of off the record."

"Off the record?" Yates exclaimed. Pointing out that the meeting was not only public but televised, he said: "It's all over the record now."

Molamphy allowed that that was probably the case.

He added: "Maybe we can back up the tape a little bit."

THIS WAS my first-ever Chino meeting. I've attended council meetings in Rancho Cucamonga, Upland, Montclair, Claremont, La Verne, Fontana and Chino Hills, along with my regular attendance in Ontario and Pomona. But with Chino's council convening on the same schedule as Ontario's, I never made it to Chino.

That is, until Tuesday, when Ontario's council decided to play hooky from its official duties and attend the Lakers exhibition game at the city arena.

Thus, my arrival at the Chino council chambers (after consulting a map). I wasn't the only Ontario refugee: regular attendee Daryl Vollrath was in Chino too. It's tough being a meeting junkie.

It was a pleasant, if slightly dull, 34-minute meeting. The 11 routine items on the "consent calendar" were dispatched in under 20 seconds, making me think the Pomona council, and its staff, might benefit from a field trip.

My attendance did not go unremarked upon.

"I'd like to welcome a stranger to our council meeting," Councilman Earl Elrod said, noting my presence in the back row.

"I thought he just hung out in Pomona and Ontario," Yates said. "Did you find your way here OK?"

I appreciate the mayor's concern.

Shortly before the meeting's adjournment, Molamphy ended his final remarks of the evening with a compliment about my "great" columns -- which I hope was on the record.

While the Chino crowd wasn't very newsworthy, they know how to make a stranger feel right at home.

David Allen writes Friday, Sunday and Wednesday, strangely. E-mail david.allen@inlandnewspapers.com, call (909) 483-9339 or write 2041 E. Fourth St., Ontario 91764. Read his blog at

To see more of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.dailybulletin.com/.

Copyright (c) 2009, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Calif.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

<< -- 10/23/2009>>