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Victor Cooper's electric vehicle, which he uses for his business and errands around his hometown of Kanab, is ineligible for the state's clean-air tax credit. His local lawmaker says it's a loophole that needs to be plugged.

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Utahns can grab a clean-air tax credit for buying a factory-made compressed natural gas car like a Honda Civic GX, or for driving a gas-electric hybrid such as a Toyota Prius.

They can even catch a break with regulator-approved compressed natural gas conversion kits for a truck or minivan.

But if they go all out for cleanliness, with a zero-emissions electric car, there's no state reward. Kanab restaurateur Victor Cooper found that out the hard way after claiming an $1,800 tax credit that he now has to pay back with interest.

He drives what's known as a neighborhood electric vehicle, a plug-in that sticks to the 30 mph streets and isn't much bigger than a golf cart.

"How can a zero-emissions vehicle not get a clean-emissions credit, but a vehicle that does have emissions gets it?" Cooper asked.

"This is idiotic. This is bureaucracy at its worst."

Lawmakers also were surprised, and one says he'll work to close the loophole.

"It's ridiculous that he's got a car and, to me, it meets the objectives of the law, and yet it doesn't fit," said state Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, Cooper's hometown legislator.

Yet it's true, and here's why. Lawmakers wrote the law largely to attract a wave a compressed natural gas [CNG] vehicles to Utah roads, and in 2008 they updated it to reward hybrid gasoline-electric owners as well. But to qualify for credits of up to $2,500 for CNG or $750 for hybrids, the vehicle must compare

The state approved about 1,300 tax credits last year, mostly for CNG fleet vehicles.

That leaves out what some believe is the next generation: pure plug-ins with no peer vehicles, including the little neighborhood carts like Cooper's. Technologies keep evolving, Heying said, and lawmakers find themselves trying to predict which will sell widely and clear enough pollution to merit a public incentive.

"It's not that we have anything against these types of vehicles," she said. "It's what the legislators decided."

Noel said he'll try to change that in this winter's legislative session. It appears that electric vehicles simply "slipped through the cracks" in the legislation, he said, and his colleagues should support a change.

"The more we go to electrics and hybrids, the less requirement we have for fossil fuels," he said. "That's a good thing."

Utah's oversight isn't unique, though. The federal government only started offering an electric car tax credit of $2,500 to $7,500 this year, and few states have followed, said Paul Scott, vice president of the California-based electric car advocacy group Plug In America. That group is pushing for tax credits in all states, plus a higher gas or carbon tax to make electric cars more competitive.

Neighborhood electric cars like Cooper's are gaining popularity, Scott said, especially as a family's second car. "They're not right for everyone, but they work for many," he said.

In most places they're markedly cleaner than gasoline-powered cars, even after accounting for coal-generated electricity. A plug-in electric car using the national grid average of just over half coal-generated power produces a third as much carbon dioxide as a Prius gas-electric hybrid, Scott said. In high-coal states such as Utah, in the 90 percent coal range, it's a wash.

Then there's the health benefit of transferring the pollution away from cities.

"Where we drive our cars is where we live and breathe," Scott said. "But the coal plants, they're not where we live and breathe."

Cooper paid $9,500 in Arizona for his GEM-ES, a model with a small truck bed that allows him to make wine runs or haul the recycling loads for his Rocking V cafe. A dealer in Salt Lake City also sells GEMs.

It's a practical vehicle for Kanab, he said, because he only lives a couple of miles from work and can ride in the open-air cab through most of southern Utah's mild winter. He ditched a big diesel pickup when he made the switch. He keeps a gasoline-powered Toyota for longer trips, but can get 30 miles in the GEM on a single overnight charge and never needs more than that on a workday.

He thinks Utah should rewrite the law to encourage more neighborhood electric cars in small towns.

"The spirit of the law is to reward people who are not polluting," he said, "which would be me."

Cooper's accountant claimed the credit for him on his 2005 tax return, but late last year the state informed him that he doesn't qualify and must repay the $1,823 plus $324 in penalties and interest. He's appealing the extras and running into a dispute over whether he did so in time.

Ultimately, though, his little car is in the state's legal blind spot.