State Air Board Repeals Mandate for Electric Cars
California’s landmark mandate requiring the world’s auto giants to sell electric cars next year was repealed Friday and replaced with voluntary agreements between the car companies and state air quality officials.
The expected decision by the Air Resources Board culminates a bitter, yearlong feud over California’s most controversial anti-smog rule, and marks the first time in three decades that the board has rescinded a regulation under pressure from the auto and oil industries it regulates.
Friday’s unanimous vote eliminated quotas that would have forced auto companies to put 160,000 exhaust-free cars in California showrooms through 2002, starting with 20,000 in the 1998 model year, which begins in a little more than a year.
The only quotas left in effect by the board start in model year 2003, when 10% of vehicles offered for sale, or about 100,000 annually, must be zero-emission.
The governor’s air board said the original program was destined for failure because it forced too many electric cars into the market too soon, when the technology is expensive and the cars have limited battery range. Board members promoted the new version as more likely to put large volumes of zero-emission cars on California roads because it has the enthusiastic support of all major auto companies.
“The opposition from auto makers was so strong, uniform, concerted, well-funded and unyielding that it would have been foolhardy to proceed,” said Lynne Edgerton, a former environmental activist appointed to the air board by Gov. Pete Wilson.
It was a victorious day for Detroit’s and Japan’s car companies, and a disappointing one for environmentalists.
The new deal offers no guarantee that mass-produced electric cars will be available to consumers over the next six years. But air board members said they preferred to sacrifice short-term gains in exchange for assurances that the companies will produce better cars with highly advanced batteries in later years.
“The first buyers will be pioneers and if they have a bad experience, they will tell everyone. What we’ll do is poison the well, and I don’t want to do that,” said air board member James Silva, an Orange County supervisor. “There is still some work that has to be done [on electric car technology] but the future is bright.”
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Environmentalists and utility officials said the air board bargained away too much to win the industry’s support. They worry that progress will be so slow for the next six years that as the 2003 deadline nears, the auto makers will again seek a reprieve.
With California’s population and miles traveled increasing, air quality officials say pollution-free cars are essential over the next two decades to clean up smog.
To replace the rescinded rule, the Big Seven--General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, Mazda and Nissan--signed contracts with the state agency containing confidential provisions.
The companies collectively promised in private negotiations with the board’s staff to have capacity in 1998 to build 14,000 electric cars. However, they are free to set the actual volumes they produce and face no penalties if they fail, and their annual production plans will be kept secret.
Sam Leonard, General Motors’ emission control director, called it a “historic contract” with all seven companies that means “the electric vehicle now has a real chance for long-term success.”
The changes were “necessary to avoid a catastrophe in 1998,” said Toyota executive Dave Hermance.
ARB Chairman John Dunlap stressed that the new partnership will put 800,000 of the cars “onto the production lines and into the showrooms, and most importantly, on California’s roads” by 2010.
“By providing more time and relying upon the market and harnessing the collective energy of the auto companies, we felt we could strengthen the launch,” he said.
Air board member Ron Roberts, a San Diego County supervisor, said he remains cynical about the new agreements because the auto companies “led a campaign of distortion” to discredit electric cars. He also worries that the terms were negotiated behind closed doors, and even the board members are not privy to the details of the deals they unanimously approved.
“But in balance,” he said, “this is . . . the best there is right now.”
The harshest criticism from environmentalists came from Ed Maschke, director of the California Public Interest Research Group, who accused the board members of “cutting a deal for the governor.”
“They [car companies] are not serious about a viable marketing strategy, but now you’ve put them in the driver’s seat. Putting Detroit in charge of this is like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank,” Maschke said.
Under the new contracts, the car companies promise to offset increases in pollution from repeal of the mandate by selling cars in the 49 other states that are 60% cleaner than today’s. That is supposed to improve California’s air as people move here from out of state.
Still, the new program will not reduce smog-causing emissions as much as the mandate would have until the year 2006.
“That means little to someone who’s breathing the air in 1998. We’re postponing a program for five years and we’re not asking enough in the interim,” said Tim Carmichael of the environmental group Coalition for Clean Air.
More than 1,000 comments on the proposal flooded the air board office--with 91% opposed. At the hearing, though, most environmentalists sounded conciliatory and resigned to defeat after trying in vain to salvage quotas for 2000 or 2001.
California’s rollback has national implications, since New York and Massachusetts copied the mandate to help clean their air and now will probably have to repeal theirs too.
The California air board “owes everyone a better explanation of its dramatic about-face,” said Massachusetts Atty. Gen. Scott Harshbarger.
“There is a big difference between providing the car companies some relief . . . and a wholesale repeal of the mandate until model year 2003,” he said.
Oil companies, conservative California legislators and anti-tax groups called the new deal a multibillion-dollar subsidy of products that consumers don’t want and that won’t do much to clean up smog.
The repealed rule, adopted in 1990, had required that 2% of 1998-2000 models offered for sale in California by the seven manufacturers be emission-free, and 5% in 2001 and 2002.
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In the new contracts, the only enforceable commitment before 2003 is that the seven companies must collectively make 3,750 advanced-battery demonstration cars by 2000. That compares with 60,000 emission-free vehicles required by 2000 under the original mandate.
Electric vehicle technology has made great strides in the past five years because of California’s mandate and the hundreds of millions of dollars invested by the car companies. But the debate hinged mostly on whether today’s battery range would satisfy enough drivers. Current lead-acid batteries travel less than 100 miles between charges. Advanced batteries, such as lithium-ion, with ranges of more than 200 miles, won’t be ready until 2000 at the earliest, experts say.
GM plans to sell its EV-1 sports car in Southern California and Arizona this fall, while Ford will market electric pickup trucks this summer and Chrysler will sell electric minivans in 1997. Honda and Nissan will not market electric cars for several years, and Toyota said it has not decided when to introduce its first ones.
“Competition is going to force this program to be successful,” said air board member Joseph Calhoun, a former GM executive. “That will be the driving force.”
