State may decelerate emission-free mandate
Hoping to buy an emission-free vehicle in the next few years? Finding one might soon get much tougher.
California’s Air Resources Board will vote today on whether to cut, by nearly two-thirds, the number of electric-battery and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles that major carmakers must sell here over the next decade.
The proposed change to the state’s Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate has stirred up protests from environmentalists and alternative-transportation advocates, who say automakers have little incentive to produce such vehicles unless obligated. Others say the state will be unable to meet its own greenhouse gas-reduction targets without requiring more production of emission-free vehicles. Passenger vehicles emit about 30% of California’s greenhouse gases.
“This is a very significant reduction,” said V. John White, executive director of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies in Sacramento. “We need to look at getting car companies to push more technology than they want to, sooner than they want to, not making concessions to industry.”
Automakers argue that even the reduced mandate is too tough, considering the extremely high costs associated with developing new drivetrain technology. In a March 14 letter to the air board, the six largest automakers selling in California -- General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp., Ford Motor Co., Chrysler, Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. -- expressed concerns that parts of the mandate were “overly stringent” and that the changes “place an inordinate burden upon the resources” of the companies.
The proposed revised mandate would require those carmakers to market 2,500 electric or fuel-cell vehicles here from 2012 to 2014, followed by 25,000 more from 2015 to 2017. (Smaller-volume carmakers are not required to make emission-free vehicles.)
Those numbers are far below the existing requirement, which calls for 25,000 such vehicles in the earlier period and 50,000 more between 2015 and 2017. (The mandate for 2009-2011, which isn’t up for a vote, requires 2,500 emission-free vehicles.) According to the Air Resources Board, the reduced numbers would save automakers as much as $1.3 billion a year.
Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols said the panel would probably opt for an unspecified compromise on the number of vehicles and might consider a future overhaul of the program. She denied that automakers influenced the board’s decision-making process. “This isn’t about backing down under pressure from auto companies,” Nichols said. “It’s about what’s feasible.”
The ZEV mandate, established in 1990, has long been controversial. Originally, the regulation called for 2% of all cars sold in California to be free of tailpipe emissions by 1998, ramping up to 10% by 2004, with stiff penalties for noncompliance. The goals pushed carmakers to try new technologies, and by the late 1990s, carmakers began testing electric vehicles such as the Chevrolet EV1.
Green-car advocates embraced the vehicles, but the carmakers filed suits against the air board alleging that the mandate was a crushing financial burden. That prompted modifications of the ZEV mandate that in effect ended those electric-car programs while providing what the board calls an “alternative path” to compliance that called for far fewer emission-free vehicles.
The successive revisions have created a mandate so complex that even board member Daniel Sperling acknowledges, “There’s only a handful of people in the world who understand it.”
Almost 20 years after the ZEV mandate began, fewer than 5,000 highway-legal, electric and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles have been produced for use in California by the six automakers, or about 0.33% of the roughly 1.5 million cars sold in California per year. The contentious series of decisions by the board leading to the reduced ZEV requirements were depicted in the 2006 film, “Who Killed the Electric Car?”
With new reductions on the table, “it feels like deja vu,” said Chris Paine, the film’s director and a former EV1 driver, who will film today’s meeting. “Five years later and we haven’t learned a thing.”
Most carmakers have some combination of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles and electric cars in development. But without a mandate calling for mass production, critics contend, automakers have little incentive to bring the expensive machines to market. A single fuel-cell vehicle can cost as much as $1 million when produced in small volumes.
In addition to slowing technological development, critics say the proposed rollback would make it nearly impossible for the state to meet its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80% before 2050.
A study released this week by the Union of Concerned Scientists said California would need at least 379,000 zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2020 to reach that goal.
Carmakers contend that having to make emission-free vehicles could cause significant financial distress. Many automakers have reported huge 2007 losses. The industry is facing deep sales drops and the prospect of the worst year, in terms of U.S. sales volume, in more than a decade.
“Certainly the state has played a role in helping encourage technology development,” GM spokesman Dave Barthmus said. “But we clearly believe that if we’re going to succeed, we have to develop our own energy alternatives on our own terms.”
Along with the six carmakers subject to the ZEV mandate, Volkswagen, Daimler (maker of Mercedes), BMW, Mitsubishi Motors Corp. and Hyundai Motor Co. all filed public comments with the air board, arguing, among other things, that if they someday do sell enough cars to be subject to the ZEV mandate, they should be given as long as 12 years to comply. Environmental organizations, plus Google Inc., electric carmaker Tesla, the mayor of San Francisco and the states of Vermont and Massachusetts (they and eight other states have signed on to the ZEV mandate) were among the groups filing comments calling on the board to step up its ZEV requirements.
On Wednesday, activists, actors, environmentalists and political figures held a rally in Sacramento against the proposed changes.
Board officials say they expect upward of 200 people to speak before the panel prior to its vote. With each given as long as three minutes, the session could last more than 10 hours. Among those planning to speak is Tim Carmichael, senior policy director at the Coalition for Clean Air.
“This proposal is 180 degrees from what we know the state needs to achieve our climate and air-quality goals,” he said. “Without a strong ZEV, I don’t see any real innovation coming from the big carmakers.”
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