Seconds after the little bright red three-wheeled car swooped quietly into a parking space, the curious converged.

"What is that thing?"

"How much mileage do you get?"

"How much are they?"

"Where can I get one?"

Dale Atkins, a research engineer in Georgia Tech's School of Aerospace Engineering who lives in Midtown Atlanta, politely answered the questions he has been asked a thousand times before.

"It's a Corbin Sparrow."

"There is no mileage. It has an electric engine."

"You can get a used one for about $8,000."

"The company is out of business, but eBay is a good place to look for used ones."

Atkins, of Atlanta, and Tech alumnus Stephen Taylor, of Marietta, Ga., are members of a small but dedicated group of electric car lovers.

"I've always been interested in not using gas," Taylor, ChE 80, said. "I started out with a Dodge Dart, then a GM Citation that got 30 miles per gallon, then I tried another that did better than that."

After a series of gasoline-powered vehicles, Taylor finally ended up with a Honda Insight that got 72 miles per gallon.

"Then I decided to go all-electric," Taylor said. "I have seven electric cars now. I did have nine but I sold two."

Taylor and Atkins agree that the gasoline electric hybrids built by Honda, Toyota and Ford are wonderfully gas efficient, but they are still gas dependent.

"The next step in the evolution is plug-in hybrids," Atkins said. "If you take a hybrid like a Toyota Prius, put a bigger battery pack in it so it can go 20 to 30 miles on battery alone, then the next step will be to get rid of the gas engine completely. The electric car will be reborn. You know we had electric cars in 1970. It's not a new idea."

Taylor said a common misperception about electric cars is its lack of range.

"We have cars that can go 140 to 160 miles per charge," he said. "Ten years ago, the top-of-the-line battery was a nickel metal hydride battery that had a range of about 30 miles and weighed about 60 pounds each. Now there are lithium batteries for cars that are much lighter. I replaced the old batteries in my Geo Metro with lithium batteries. They produce four times as much energy and weigh about 50 percent less. The car that would only go 30 miles per charge can now go 130 miles."

So why aren't these all-electric cars being produced?

"We believe the auto industry and the gasoline industry have conspired to keep electric vehicles away from the American public," Atkins said. "We maintain the only reason they ever built them was that California passed zero emission requirements legislation and forced manufacturers to build electric cars. But as soon as California caved in, the auto industry stopped building them — and in the worst cases like General Motors — crushed them all. Perfectly good vehicles and they crushed them."

Why? Taylor said the auto industry is designed to build gas-powered cars. "They have plants all over the world that manufacture auto parts like carburetors or fuel pumps that electric cars don't use, so all their infrastructure would be totally useless to them."

Taylor said he believes Toyota will be the company to lead the way back to the outlet.

"There are rumors they are developing a plug-in hybrid that might be available in a couple of years," he said. "It would have a smaller battery pack and allow you to go 30 to 40 miles on electricity, then the gas engine would come on.