California air quality watchdogs may not force automobile manufacturers to sell
electric cars from 2003, the New York Times (NYT) reported on Friday (8/12/00).
The NYT said that the California Air Resources Board has conceded that battery-powered
cars are not yet practical and recommended on Friday de-emphasising fully electric
vehicles and instead giving more encouragement to other types of ‘clean’
cars, such as hybrid vehicles that combine petrol and electric power.
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"The staff is acknowledging the fact that there are a lot of other technologies
that are moving faster than batteries," Jerry Martin, a board spokesman,
told the NYT. "Our real mission here is to clean up vehicles and the air,
and we can’t do that with vehicles on paper. We need to get the vehicles on
the road."
The new plan, if approved by the board next month, would represent the third
time the requirements for electric vehicles have been relaxed since the programme
began in 1990 as an effort to reduce California’s smog. Whatever California
does is expected to influence New York, Massachusetts and other states, the
NYT said.
Under the existing standard, 4% of the cars offered for sale in the state by
major auto makers starting in 2003 must have no tailpipe emissions, a standard
that only battery-powered cars can now meet. Another 6% must have extremely
low emissions.
Under the new proposal, the NYT says, only 2% of cars offered for sale would
have to have ‘zero’ emissions, and even some of those could be hybrids
that rely mainly on their batteries. Another 2% could be hybrid vehicles that
rely heavily on petrol power, like the Honda Insight and the Toyota Prius, both
of which are already on sale. The remaining 6% could be various vehicles with
extremely low emissions, including some that use only petrol engines.
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By GlobalDataThe new standard would require sales of as few as 4,650 electric vehicles in
2003, down from the current standard’s 22,000, according to the agency’s estimates.
The NYT said that auto companies, which have long argued that they could never
sell 22,000 electric cars in a year, welcomed the shift.
"For the first time the board is acknowledging that there are huge obstacles
to this electric-vehicle mandate and there are more promising technologies,"
Gloria Bergquist, spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers,
a trade group in Washington, told the newspaper. She said the new standards
would still be tough to meet.
But the NYT said proponents of electric cars were dismayed. "We absolutely
have to have a viable battery-electric program if we are to meet our air quality
goals," said Bonnie Holmes- Gen, assistant vice president for government
relations at the American Lung Association of California.
Auto makers argue that battery- powered cars are impractical because they cost
$US20,000 more to manufacture than petrol- powered cars and can go only 50 to
100 miles or so before the batteries need recharging, which takes several hours.
Environmental groups contend that no other cars are as clean and that the pressure
on auto companies to develop electric vehicles had spurred innovation.
The NYT said that both sides said they were surprised by the scope of proposed
changes because the board reaffirmed its commitment to the electric-vehicle
programme in September. But the board then instructed its staff to meet with
auto makers to discuss how to make the programme more practical. That resulted
in Friday’s recommendations.
