Futurist and Mobility Maverick Dan Sturges Believes Small Electric Cars Hold the Key to Solving Transportation Challenges
Dan Sturges has made a four-decade career of working to solve what he calls “highway-capable car disease.” He recently summarized his proposed remedy to an audience of nearly 300 during the morning panel discussion “From Vision to Reality: The Next Chapter in the South Bay’s Evolution” at the South Bay Cities Council of Governments’ 25th General Assembly. His ideas center on the integration of micromobility: the use of small, low-speed zero-emission vehicles such as bikes, e-bikes, scooters and neighborhood electric vehicles for short neighborhood trips.
“Here’s the big idea, folks. We don’t have to have one vehicle for all our trips,” Sturges said. “L.A. County’s got 10 million people [around 7 million cars]. So if half the people are going to work, 90% of the United States drives alone to work in their car with four empty seats [12 million total empty seats].”
Dan Sturges demonstrates how to park a small car at a 2014 event in Las Vegas. The Renault Twizy, driven in Europe but not street legal in the United States, is classified as a quadricycle and reaches 49 mph.
Sturges compared America’s societal norm of leaving “large cars” parked 97% of the time in garages or parking lots—where housing is scarce and high-priced land is at a premium— to a “social mental illness.”
“We have a binary problem here,” he said. “We either think it’s the bike and the bus, or it’s the five-seat automobile. That’s our choice. Well, that’s a false choice. So what I’ve been working on for 40 years now is to take what we like about our car and to make it smaller for the needs of the local trip.”
ORIGINS OF A MICROMOBILITY DREAM
His vision for a micromobility future first developed when he was a high school student in Boulder, Colorado, and drove a Vespa because he couldn’t afford a car.
“Why can’t it have a roof? Why can’t it carry cargo? No, you don’t have to buy an automobile,” he thought at the time. “So I got interested in this gap between [scooters and full-sized cars]—little vehicles.”
After earning a degree at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, he went to work for General Motors in Detroit, Michigan. A year later he departed GM and returned to California, where he would develop the first neighborhood electric vehicle, known as the GEM car. GM would eventually mass-produce the car, and today the GEM—designed to travel a maximum speed of 25 mph—is available in four model sizes. GM promotes it as a “microtransit solution for urban cities looking to cut costs and emissions.”
Today Sturges serves as the cofounder and visionary of Mobilitee, a design consultancy focused on “creating integrated mobility options—enabling residents in United States suburban households to live great, connected lives—without needing to own a second automobile.” He also recently penned the book “Near to Far,” which lays out a vision for “multimodal, equitable transportation systems that enhance communities and reduce dependency on highway-capable automobiles.”
BLUEPRINT FOR A BETTER SYSTEM
Dan Sturges (at the podium), explains how integrated mobility options would help residents to live connected lives without owning a second automobile. Panel speakers, from right of the podium: Mike Jenkins, general counsel, SBCCOG, and moderator; Lujuana Medina, environmental initiatives division manager, SoCalREN, Energy Environmental Services, Los Angeles County; and Wally Siembab, research director, SBCCOG.
In his talk, Sturges outlined a blueprint for a more effective system. It includes three mobility tiers: 1) light, low-speed vehicles for short distances; 2) fast, heavy cars for highway travel, as well as public transit or other regional mobility options; and 3) mass transit for long-distance travel, which includes train and air travel.
He suggested that drivers who commute long distances to work or who shuttle family members to and from school may still need to own “large cars.” But he suggests that those who telecommute consider whether their larger, “far car” still makes sense and the possibility of adding a second micromobility vehicle for local trips. Under his model those who part ways with “large car” ownership could potentially drive a micro vehicle to a local “mobility hub,” where “far cars” could be rented by the minute or hour for longer trips, as well as connect easily with public transit.
Despite its longevity, the tiny GEM car and its design contemporaries have remained on the mobility fringe. However, in recent years other newer types of microdevices, such as e-bikes and neighborhood electric vehicles that resemble golf carts, have surged in popularity—especially in South Bay coastal communities including El Segundo, Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach.
AFFORDABILITY AND SAFETY CONUNDRUM
Sturges said historically are two main barriers to the full adoption of his micromobility dream: affordability and safety. He believes the GEM car, with a sticker price of close to $15,000, should instead sell for around $5,000—close to what an entry-level electric golf cart goes for.
Currently diluting the affordability concern is the math of car ownership cost over time. The American Automobile Association has estimated the annual cost of owning a standard gas-powered automobile to be more than $12,000 annually, but unlike full-speed electric cars, low-speed vehicles don’t require costly charging equipment upgrades at home. Houses and parking lots are already equipped for charging low-speed vehicles on normal 110V wall outlets.
On the safety front Sturges suggested creating better and safer bike lanes and infrastructure for low-speed vehicle use. South Bay cities moved in this direction in 2023 with the launch of phase one of theMeasure M-funded South Bay Local Travel Network (LTN) in El Segundo.
THE SOUTH BAY’S MICRO FUTURE
The Local Travel Network’s “rolling turtle” signage informs drivers when they are on the network in launch city El Segundo.
The SBCCOG and the city developed and launched the first-of-its-kind network to safely accommodate the use of micromobility vehicles as they share the road with traditional motorized vehicles. Streets on the route are marked with “rolling turtle” signage that notifies users they are on the network and provides wayfinding guidance to major destinations and safe intersections. The network will eventually span 243 miles of existing low-speed streets (25 to 35 mph) that will connect the South Bay as far north as Inglewood to as far south as San Pedro.
The SBCCOG’s own research on localuse vehicles supports the LTN project. The impetus for this research was the 2008 passage of Senate Bill 375, which required cities to combine local land use planning with transportation planning. This was on the heels of legislation and executive orders passed by then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger that addressed climate change. This includes the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
In response, the SBCCOG developed a program called Local Use Vehicles, also known as the LUV project. It loaned out five electric small vehicles with a speed limit of 35 mph to local community members. Under the arrangement, the vehicles—each equipped with GPS—could only be used on local roads. The research revealed that 70% of trips taken in the South Bay are 3 miles or less, bolstering Sturges’ conclusions that “right-sizing” to smaller cars for short trips makes sense.
Work on the LTN’s next phase is underway in Redondo Beach, Carson, Lomita and Lawndale. The completion date for the Local Travel Network in its entirety has not yet been determined, but user feedback is currently being gathered in El Segundo to refine how it will be implemented in other cities. •
To watch the panel discussion in full, visit bit.ly/generalassemblyplaylist. For more about the LUV project at bit.ly/luvreport.