Electric Car Concept Shocks Auto Industry
Although the electric vehicle has been around since at least 1916 in one form or another, its contemporary transformation from a glorified golf cart to serious contender as a commuter car began in earnest last Sept. 28.
That’s when the state Air Resources Board, meeting in Los Angeles, voted unanimously to approve new, tough standards for auto emissions. With that initiative, the ARB not only further encouraged commercial production of electric vehicles during the next few years, it may have set the stage for a fundamental change in the way cars are operated and powered.
“To our knowledge, it’s the first time in the world that any regulatory agency has mandated a use of car powered by anything other than gasoline,” says board spokesman Bill Sessa. “The severity of California’s air quality problems demands we look further than the rest of the nation and look for new ideas, and we have.”
The new standards start slashing emissions beginning in 1994 and tighten them progressively over the next five years. Under this timetable, by 1998, at least 2% of all new cars sold in California must produce no emissions, which, with current technology, means they must be electric-powered. By 2003, at least 10%--or 200,000 cars--must produce zero emissions.
“What that means,” says Bill Kelly of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, “is that the horse race is on.”
Although the district has its own timetable for zero-emission car use, its enforcement authority is limited to fleet owners, including corporations that purchase company cars. But the Air Resource Board, by setting emission standards, has regulated the entire auto industry into providing zero-emission cars for commuters.
The impact is already being felt.
“It’s revolutionary,” says Richard Schweinberg, manager of electric transportation research at Southern California Edison, where engineers have studied electric vehicles and systems since 1988.
With 12 other states considering adoption of California’s regulation, major auto makers have been forced to “kick their electric vehicle programs up to the front burner,” he says. He predicts that Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, as well as Japanese and European auto makers, will be selling electric vehicles by 1998, and that such vehicles will be sold from standard showrooms by the turn of the century.
“Each manufacturer will start with a single car: the GM Impact, which has already been unveiled as a concept car; the Ford Ecostar, which is now sold in Europe as a gasoline vehicle, and the Chrysler mini-van, which is an electric version of the Caravan,” he says.
At the same time, battery research has taken on the urgency of the Gold Rush. Nissan Motor Co. and Japan Storage Battery recently announced a quick battery recharge system.
And the Big Three auto makers have formed a consortium to develop three to six advanced batteries. One auto executive has likened the research to “going to the moon.”
“They’ve gotten real interested since September,” says Schweinberg.
Industry watcher Daniel Yergin, whose book “The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power” is described as the definitive work on oil and global politics, says the new California regulations offer a “whole new ballgame.”
“These (Air Resources Board) tea leaves have all the subtlety of a two-ton slab of concrete, and the auto makers have no trouble reading them. . . . California is regulating a market into existence, and the impact could be felt around the world.”
Although other alternative fuels, like methanol, would take billions of dollars to use and wouldn’t change the basic dimensions of American life beyond adding another pump at the gas stations, says Yergin, “the electric car is something that could really be transforming. Who provides the fuel source and how it is provided are different, and so are the vehicles. It could break the hold of hydrocarbon on transportation.”
