Posted on 03/26/2008 8:50:22 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
Vehicles that run on batteries or hydrogen could take even longer to show up in America's showrooms under changes being considered by the state Air Resources Board.
California air regulators on Thursday are scheduled to vote on a proposal that would reduce the number of zero-emission vehicles automakers must produce in California and 10 other states by 2014.
The proposed reduction has drawn criticism from environmental and health advocates, California's top air regulator, former Secretary of State George Shultz and even a former director of the CIA. They question whether the state can afford to relax the rules on automakers in the era of global warming.
At the same time, the largest automakers say they need the California Air Resources Board to give them more time to lower the cost of battery-powered or fuel-cell vehicles.
They also are frustrated that energy companies and the state and federal governments have failed to build the needed fueling stations to support hydrogen vehicles.
"(The air board) is on the verge of doing a great disservice to our national security, increasing our dependence on oil, to putting off the day when we can drive on something other than oil in the very, very distant future," former CIA director James Woolsey said Wednesday during a capital news conference.
California initially adopted its zero-emission vehicle mandate in 1990. It required that 10 percent of new cars sold in the state by the country's six major manufacturers be nonpolluting, zero-emission vehicles in 2003.
Ten other states - Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington - adopted the same mandate.
At the time, California's mandate was the most aggressive program in the nation requiring zero-emission vehicles, or ones that do not produce smog-forming emissions such as nitrogen oxide.
In the years since, the rules have been modified four times. The most significant revision was in 2003, when regulators feared that battery-powered cars could not be mass-produced and as they faced a lawsuit from the auto industry. The Air Resources Board ruled that hydrogen cars, hybrids and cleaner-burning gasoline vehicles could meet its zero-emission mandate instead.
As a result, the program has not yet produced the commercial introduction of zero-emission vehicles by the large automakers. The 2003 rules set a goal of putting 25,000 of those cars on the road by 2014.
The recommendation before the Air Resources Board on Thursday would further reduce the number of hydrogen fuel cell or battery-powered vehicles automakers are required to put on the road in California between 2012 and 2014.
Instead of producing 25,000 vehicles, General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp., Ford Motor Co., Honda Motor Co., Chrysler LLC and Nissan Motor Co. would be obligated to build 2,500 for use in California. That number could be raised when the board meets.
"I think that rollback is more extreme than what the board would go for," said Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, who described the previous board's action in 2003 as a mistake.
"Our goal is to move technology further, faster, to transform the fleet, not just have a few boutique cars on the road," she said in a conference call Tuesday with reporters.
The air board also will be asked to decide whether automakers should be given more time to deploy battery-powered and hydrogen cars in the 10 states that have adopted California's rules.
The current mandate requires automakers to put zero-emission vehicles in those states beginning in 2011, but the proposal from the air board's staff recommends extending the deadline to 2014 for battery-powered cars and 2017 for hydrogen cars.
Vermont's acting director of the state Department of Conservation wrote California air regulators this week, saying such a delay would "result in negative impacts on consumer appetite and market development" of alternative cars in the rest of the country.
To offset the lower mandate on zero-emission vehicles, the air board's staff proposes that automakers instead put 75,000 gas-electric hybrids on the road between 2012 and 2014.
It also requires automakers to continue making cleaner gasoline vehicles, such as the Ford Focus, Nissan Altima and Honda Accord, as well as more hybrids such as the Toyota Prius and Ford Escape.
That shift would satisfy the air quality goals of the program, continuing to reduce the amount of smog-forming chemicals in a state with the country's worst air pollution.
It also would save auto manufacturers $1.3 billion a year while they explore new technology, according to the staff report.
"Today, the vehicles are cost-prohibitive for a consumer to go out and buy one except for the extremely wealthy individual," General Motors spokesman Dave Barthmuss said. "I think we're making tremendous strides in making the technology real."
Barthmuss said automakers are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to build one fuel cell vehicle or battery-powered car. Such a vehicle would cost far more than the average American can afford, he said.
GM also has spent about $10 million on hydrogen fueling stations because not enough of them have been built to support the vehicles regulators are demanding.
While the six large automakers have asked California regulators for more time, a startup electric car company in Southern California plans to ask the board to increase the mandate by as much as 50,000 cars over three years.
"The large manufacturers' pleas say it's too hard," said Diarmuid O'Connell, director of corporate development at Tesla Motors. "We've already done it."
Last week, the San Carlos-based company began full production of a two-seat roadster that will sell for $98,000.
Tesla Motors sold out of this year's model, which it plans to make in limited quantities. The car is powered by a battery and can travel at least 200 miles before a recharge.
The company has taken 400 orders for its 2009 model and is planning a four-door sedan in 2010 that likely will cost between $55,000 and $75,000. It eventually plans a cheaper car modeled after the Toyota Prius, O'Connell said.
Environmental groups and health advocates also are lobbying the Air Resources Board to expand the zero-emission vehicle program as part of the targets California must meet under its 2006 law to reduce overall levels of greenhouse gas emissions.
The state is required by law to cut its output of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by about a quarter by the year 2020.
To reach that goal, the Union of Concerned Scientists estimates automakers must put at least 379,000 battery-powered or hydrogen cars on the road within 12 years.
California Air Resources Board
http://www.arb.ca.gov/
Why don’t they mandate perpetual-motion machines while they’re at it?
where do people think electricity comes from?...thin air?
“where do people think electricity comes from?...thin air?”
Hate to say it, but they probably do. And most of them vote Dimocrat, which could explain a lot of things.
Yup.
How exactly are battery powered cars “zero emission”? Do the politicians have any idea how toxic the materials are that go into batteries and the emissions produced by the manufacturing processes to build them?
I can remember when we had real lead-sleds and it wasn’t from the batteries.
The California fascist bureaucrats should pass out swastika armbands, animal loin cloths, spears and sticks to dig up grubworms and then ban civilization.
All hail central planning!
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