Reports Give Mixed Picture of Future of Electric Cars
Two state reports paint a mixed picture about the practicality of electric-powered cars, leaving the fate uncertain of California’s pioneering mandate that requires large numbers of pollution-free vehicles to be sold beginning in two years.
The state’s zero-emission vehicle mandate is the most controversial smog control program in place today because it is designed to prompt a sweeping and fundamental change in the vehicles that Californians drive.
A report released Wednesday by a panel of engineers assembled by the California Air Resources Board includes sharp criticism of the commercial viability of electric cars. The three advisors concluded that current battery technology will remain costly and that more advanced batteries that appeal to consumers are still at least five years away.
In its own draft report released this week, the staff of the Air Resources Board was more optimistic. The report says the 2003 mandate is achievable because today’s electric car batteries have already advanced substantially and the cost is steadily declining.
Neither report offers a conclusion about whether to keep, weaken or eliminate the requirements, and they give ammunition to both sides as the controversy heats up. In September, the Air Resources Board will review its mandate, originally set in 1990, and determine if it is achievable.
Under the existing regulation, beginning with the 2003 model year, 10% of cars and light trucks sold in California by major manufacturers must be zero-emission vehicles. With various allowable credits for hybrid electric-gasoline cars and other vehicles, that amounts to about 22,000 battery-only cars required per year. About 2,300 are on California roads today.
For months, the six companies involved--General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Honda, DaimlerChrysler and Nissan--have been intensely lobbying the air board to eliminate the sales quota. They foresee no unsubsidized market for electric cars in the next few years because of the high cost of production and limited battery range.
But environmentalists and other proponents of alternative energy say that the market could be strong but that the auto industry is stifling it by keeping the prices high and production low.
Most of the battery panel’s report bolsters the auto industry’s stance, and the air board is likely to give considerable weight to its findings in its September review.
Environmentalists were disappointed in the advisory panel’s conclusions and said the Air Resources Board staff’s report is more credible. They said that the battery experts have expertise only in technology, not in consumer marketing, and that they relied on auto industry cost forecasts that are too high.
“There’s a jarring inconsistency in comparing this [battery panel] report to the ARB’s draft staff report,” said Roland Hwang, transportation analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists, which is lobbying to keep the mandate.
The battery experts concluded that today’s nickel metal hydride batteries, which power about 1,000 cars now on California roads, are reliable and performing well.
But “battery cost remains the largest obstacle to EV commercialization in the near term,” the report says. The panel reported that even if 10,000 to 20,000 of these battery packs were manufactured annually, the cost would remain at $9,500 to $13,000 per car. That is three or four times higher than the cost that auto makers say would make the cars comparable in cost to conventional vehicles.
Today’s electric vehicles run 70 to 100 miles on a single charge, which the battery experts called adequate for most uses. But, they added, it “is considered less than desirable by most drivers.”
Lithium ion batteries that substantially extend the range are promising, the panel’s report says, but affordable ones are “unlikely for the next six to eight years.”
Bill Powers, Ford Motor Co.’s vice president of research, said a lithium ion battery in a small laptop computer costs $300 to $400, so building one that moves a one-ton car is exorbitantly expensive.
“Batteries are improving but not at the rate people expect of electrical equipment,” he said. “You are going to get limited range unless you pay a heck of a lot.”
In its own report, however, the board’s staff was more confident of the marketability of the cars using the current battery technology.
“The technology has arrived at the point where reliable vehicles are available, with performance characteristics sufficient to meet a range of market applications,” the staff report says. The market, according to the report, “can absorb the necessary number of vehicles” to achieve the mandate.
The staff acknowledged that the major constraint is cost, and that government subsidies for consumers will be required “in the near term” to achieve the mandate.
The two reports come in anticipation of the ARB staff’s two-day public workshop on the mandate Wednesday and next Thursday in Diamond Bar.
The mandate already has been substantially weakened. It originally required 2% of sales beginning in 1998 to be zero-emissions, but the board, under former Gov. Pete Wilson’s administration, dropped that quota and substituted agreements that the companies sell small numbers of demonstration vehicles.
The largest car manufacturer, General Motors, has sold 995 electric cars and pickup trucks in California since 1998. If the mandate remains, GM’s requirement jumps to at least 4,000 per year plus 11,500 hybrids or gasoline-powered cars that qualify as super-ultra-low emission vehicles.
“If we don’t draw the line in the sand today, we’ll all be retreating and we’re never going to get to the zero-emission vehicle future,” Hwang said.
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Times staff writer John O’Dell in Detroit contributed to this story.
