Big 3 Try to Put Brakes on Push for Electric Cars

Even as they begin nationwide road tests of electric vehicles, Detroit’s auto makers are mounting sharp new attacks on California’s mandate that they sell zero-emission cars in the state beginning in 1998.

Top industry officials met in Detroit this week to weigh “a broad, consistent and joint strategic plan” for overturning the requirement.

At a board meeting of the American Automobile Manufacturers Assn.--the industry’s main lobbying group--executives took under advisement a proposal to seek “relief in California through all appropriate channels,” including appeals to the California Air Resources Board, Gov. Pete Wilson, the Legislature and Vice President Al Gore, industry officials confirmed.

Though no plan has yet been adopted, auto makers have taken steps on their own.

Ford Motor Co. officials recently took their complaints about electric vehicles directly to Wilson, saying the technology was unavailable and the price prohibitive. They urged that other alternatives be tried for cleaning up the air.

General Motors Corp. is leading the Big Three’s fight against the spread of California’s clean-air rules to 12 Northeast states, fearing it would increase greatly the number of electric vehicles the auto makers must produce in four years.

There is growing speculation that the recently announced “clean-car” initiative--an auto industry-federal government partnership to produce a car that gets 80 miles to the gallon--will be used by the car makers to pressure California regulators to relax the state’s electric-car rules.

“What they have in mind is to get the federal Environmental Protection Agency to come up with a new standard . . . and to use it as a cover to try to get rid of the California standards,” said David Freeman, general manager of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.

Ford officials confirmed that the company is taking a more aggressive approach to California’s electric-vehicle requirements. “We’ve gotten a policy decision in the last couple of months that we’re going to ask that this rule be set aside,” said Steve Blankenship, Ford’s lobbyist in Sacramento.

The new campaign comes as California’s economy remains mired in a severe slump and pressure is growing on state government to ease regulations seen as anti-business.

It also comes just as the auto makers begin road tests of prototype electric vehicles. Last week, GM said it was undertaking a two-year study that will allow 1,000 consumers in 12 cities to test drive its electric-powered Impact coupes. Ford soon will send its electric-powered Ecostar van to several utilities for testing. Chrysler Corp. is converting 50 Dodge minivans into electric vehicles for similar tests.

At best, the auto makers are sending out mixed messages about electric vehicles. They can build them, the companies say, but no one may want them because of their high price tags and limited range.

In a recent appearance in Los Angeles, Chrysler Chairman Robert Eaton was dismissive of California’s electric-car mandate. “Setting these goals out there, that nobody can meet, isn’t really helping the situation,” he said.

GM officials said their much-ballyhooed Impact test program, announced last week, could prove that consumers don’t want such vehicles. “We hope to have some better data that maybe says: ‘Maybe we shouldn’t proceed as rapidly as (the California Air Resources Board) once thought,’ ” said Raymond Buttacavoli, GM’s western regional manager for government relations.

At the meeting between Ford officials and Wilson, Ford Vice Chairman Alan D. Gilmour said the lack of advanced battery technology made building a practical, affordable electric car nearly impossible at this time.

“The probability that we can meet this mandate is low--regardless of the cost and effort we put into our electric-vehicle program,” Gilmour wrote in a Sept. 13 letter to Bob White, Wilson’s chief of staff, that summarized concerns expressed at the meeting.

The auto industry has long objected to California’s zero-emission rules, which mandate that 2% of all vehicles sold in the state in 1998 be powered by electricity. The requirement increases to 5% in 2001 and 10% in 2003.

The meeting with Wilson was set up by Robert M. Teeter, campaign chairman for President George Bush in the 1992 election and a Ford consultant on consumer issues. Both economic issues and auto industry problems were discussed.

The car makers are particularly rankled at the technology mandate--and the deadlines. They would like to use a variety of technologies--including natural gas-powered cars and hybrid vehicles that use both electric and internal-combustion engines--to meet the state’s strict clean-air goals. But the zero-emission requirement can only be met today by electricity.

And while the Big Three are working together on developing a power source through the U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium, which is funded by the federal government and private industry, there is growing concern that no marketable breakthrough can be achieved by 1998.

“We are more and more concerned with the electric-vehicle mandate, particularly its timetable,” said Susan Shackson, Ford’s director of public policy.

Cost is another big worry. The auto companies have shied away from estimating development costs, but Gilmour--Ford’s No. 2 executive--said in his letter that the company will have to spend $2 billion in the next four years to meet California’s rules.

“We don’t see a likelihood of a commercially viable program after the money is spent,” he wrote.

Gilmour suggested that California appoint a board of independent scientists and economists to study the state of emissions technology and the economics of electric cars.

State regulators say electric-car technology is more advanced than the auto companies admit. Officials of the California Air Resources Board say they believe that the companies can meet the requirements. “We continue to be encouraged by the pace of electric-car research,” said agency spokesman Bill Sessa.

Sessa said the governor’s office has not contacted the board about Ford’s concerns, and a spokesman for Wilson said the Ford meeting was the governor’s only recent contact with the auto makers.

There is no plan to relax the rules, though they will be reviewed in late 1994 and again in 1996, Sessa said.

Auto officials say next year’s review is key because they must establish production plans by 1995. It typically takes a minimum of three years to design and produce a new car.

“We have to decide soon, real soon,” said Mike Liedtke, GM’s chief vehicle system engineer.

Meanwhile, GM is heading efforts by the Big Three to head off any extension of California’s electric-car mandate that could force them to greatly increase the number of electric cars they have to produce by 1998.

The firms are opposing adoption of California’s rules by 12 Northeast states stretching from Virginia to Maine.

While the states may ask the federal EPA to enforce California’s clean-air rules in the East, GM has quietly floated a compromise: The auto makers would agree to produce cleaner cars than required by federal rules--but not emissions-free cars as demanded by California.

At its recent meeting in Detroit, the American Automobile Manufacturers Assn. board discussed a plan that would replace California’s zero-emissions rule with a program that “has better economic, technical and political feasibility” while still providing “acceptable environmental results,” according to an agenda of the meeting obtained by The Times.

News of the GM proposal prompted the Edison Electric Institute, which represents most of the electric utility industry, to fire off letters of protest earlier this week to President Clinton and top Administration environmental officials.

“The United States has the technological lead in electric vehicles,” the group’s letter said. “Are we going to watch the U.S. auto industry surrender this technology to BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Fiat, Mazda and Nissan?”

James M. Strock, head of the California EPA, joined in with a letter to federal EPA chief Carol Browner, urging her to affirm support of “the California regulations, as well as the right of other states to adopt them.”

Added Mike Gage, president of Calstart, the public-private consortium attempting to build an electric-car industry in California: “It’s a full-scale assault to eliminate the zero-emission vehicle requirement.”

The battles are raging as the auto makers gear up for an joint effort with the Administration to produce a super fuel-efficient car of the future.

The clean-car partnership, announced Sept. 29, allows the sharing of technology among the auto makers and the nation’s defense laboratories. The goal is to produce, within a decade, vehicles three times more efficient than today’s.

But the initiative could provide the auto makers with ammunition against California’s rules.

They are likely to ask why one state should mandate an electric car in four years when the federal government is giving the industry 10 years to produce a prototype from a variety of technologies.

“The auto makers may use it as a shield against having to meet higher fuel-efficiency standards,” said Daniel Becker, director of the Sierra Club’s global warning program in Washington. “They may try to use it as a sword against the California electric-vehicle mandate.”