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It has to be about the goofiest looking thing on the road. It’s got three wheels and one door, a steering wheel and a motorcycle license plate, and one person can zip up the HOV lane in it.  

The Sparrow, hatched at Corbin Motors in Hollister, is currently the most viable electric car you can buy. That’s not saying much, according to some. But investments in the company and “strategic alliances” with some heavy hitters hint that this little bird is about to fly into the big time.  

Anyone who’s spent much time on Berkeley’s streets has seen the little cars scooting around town.  

“We’ve got a lot of Sparrow drivers in Berkeley,” said Corbin Motors’ president Tom Corbin. “Probably because that area is a real center of environmental leadership.” 

Berkeley’s Transportation Commission secretary, Karen Haney-Owens says, “I live near the (Emeryville) dealer, and every time I go by, it looks like a garage full of Easter eggs.” 

About $15,000 gets you into the exclusive club of early adopters, owners of what Corbin calls his “proof of concept vehicle.”  

The concept, involving a short-range electric vehicle that qualifies as a motorcycle but drives like a car, would serve the needs of many commuters. “Look at all the cars in gridlocked traffic. SUVs, trucks, minivans, cars – what’s the common denominator?” asks Corbin. “One person per car!”  

Electric cars are nothing new, and the technology on this one is pretty basic – a bunch of batteries, a motor (a big version of what runs your coffee grinder). But other electric cars, like their gasoline powered counterparts, have always been multi-passenger affairs.  

“These things sell themselves driving up the carpool lane in rush-hour traffic,” says Anthony Luzi, Corbin’s Emeryville dealer.  

The Berkeley parking enforcement office confirms that the Sparrow can indeed legally park in motorcycle spaces. 

Add to that the facts that the Sparrow costs a buck or two to charge up overnight, and produces zero emissions, and you’ve got a green-commuter’s fantasy. So why doesn’t everybody own one? 

“It’s a beta-quality product at best,” said Steven Johnson, an East Bay Sparrow owner until his was destroyed in a crash (he was unharmed). Johnson says he will buy another vehicle from Corbin Motors, “but I’m holding out for the Sparrow II.” 

It’s not exactly a plug-and-play adventure, but Sparrow ownership is generally not a nightmare, either. Owners report mixed results. 

UC Berkeley Professor Vivek Subramanian bought an early Sparrow, No. 36, and says he has “basically had 100 percent up time,” and hasn’t had to tinker with his Sparrow at all. 

Subramanian asked the university to install a charging station in the parking lot where he and one other Sparrow driver park. The university happily obliged. The parking office says it will provide free electricity to any Cal faculty who drive electric cars. 

“I always get a good parking place,” says Subramanian. 

About 235 Sparrows have been sold since the first one was registered in July 1999. Of those, most have made the trip back to the factory for one major repair or another.  

Early Sparrows were plagued with trouble in an electrical component, the controller, which caused full power to be applied without warning on a few cars.  

Corbin has effectively recalled all the vehicles and retrofitted an improved controller on most, at no charge. But that brings up another gripe: customer service. “We can’t give the service turnarounds we should be able to. And some of the owners are cleaning our clocks,” says Corbin. 

Inside and out, a Sparrow has the something’s-still-missing feel of a kit car.  

“You can’t compare the Sparrow to a car from the “Big Three.” Those cars don’t fail. Sparrows do,” Corbin says.  

Think of it as the price of innovation. 

But not everybody wants to pay that price. “I just want a reliable vehicle. Before I buy another one, I want much, much, much greater reliability,” says Johnson. 

The problems are not news to Corbin. “We just got into the market too quickly,” Corbin admits. “But now that we’ve shown we can do it, we’ve got people lining up to help us bring it to the next level.”  

Corbin’s “people” are investors – the company’s private stock offering has raised some $9 million in two years – and parts suppliers. Of these, the latter are probably the most important. 

Most of the Sparrow’s components were designed and fabricated in-house. But it’s more efficient to use an $11 front suspension A-arm sourced from Nissan than to build your own for $115 a copy.  

“Now that we’ve shown that we can make a viable vehicle on our own, the hard way, vendors are willing to sell us the parts to really do it up right,” Corbin says.  

The animated 36-year-old executive stands close when he talks. His eyes sparkle. He just makes you want to believe all the confident rhetoric in his business plan. 

Corbin points to a full-scale mockup of the Sparrow II, the clean-sheet revision he says will shortly address all the issues troubling the first model, and without a trace of irony asks: “Remember Henry Ford?”