Firms Told to Resume Making Electric Cars
California air quality officials directed auto makers Friday to resume production of electric cars, refusing to back away from a state mandate that is the world’s most ambitious attempt to eliminate tailpipe exhaust.
The unanimous decision by the state Air Resources Board is intended to jump-start California’s sagging zero-emission vehicle program. The program was launched a decade ago but stalled this year as companies stopped making electric cars.
To comply with California’s rules, auto makers must offer about 22,000 smog-free vehicles beginning with the 2003 model year. That would be 10 times more than cruise state highways today. The requirement rises to 31,000 zero-emission vehicles by 2006, plus tens of thousands more that have almost zero emissions. Only battery-powered cars will be available in sufficient quantities in the near term to meet the mandate.
The zero-emission rule is the environmental equivalent of trying to put a man on the moon--a dramatic experiment that aims to replace the internal combustion engines that have been the dominant power source for autos for a century.
Supporters say nonpolluting cars are the only way to force companies to invest the time and money needed to achieve technological breakthroughs.
“It’s time to get electric vehicles out of the lab, into the showroom and onto the road,” said Mark J. DeSaulnier, a member of the air board and a Contra Costa County supervisor.
Widespread use of nonpolluting vehicles is essential for the Los Angeles region to achieve healthful air, officials say. Similar programs in New England and New York are contingent on the success of the California campaign.
Supporters of the effort say that California’s willingness to pursue measures that stretch technological limits have hastened new automotive designs, including vehicles powered by batteries, fuel cells and hybrid gasoline-electric motors.
“We are well into this revolution,” said Felicia Marcus, regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Keeping the state mandate is “great news for people who breathe, and it’s going to mean a lot of lives saved.”
“This is not a short-term policy, but a long-term visionary commitment,” said Michael Kenny, executive officer for the air board.
But auto makers have fought to overturn the state’s mandate since the air board adopted it in 1990. The requirement, company officials testified during two days of public hearings before the board, forces them to sell cars at a loss and produce a product that will not satisfy the needs of many motorists. Moreover, the companies say, the requirement will do little to clean the air in the short run.
“California cannot afford the [zero-emission vehicle] mandate. It’s a technology development program that didn’t deliver as expected,” said David Hermance, executive engineer for Toyota. “This is a technology that should not be commercialized because it’s not cost-effective.”
Eager to be free of battery cars, auto makers stopped making them after filling limited quotas and have shifted their research efforts to other technologies, including electro-chemical fuel cells, hybrid vehicles and mini-cars, which are cheaper to build.
The air board’s 9-0 vote was intended to jolt the auto companies back into production--and quickly. Typically, two years is required to roll out new model cars. The agency’s greatest fear is that the on-again, off-again pace of the program has created uncertainty in the marketplace that threatens technological advancement.
Some of the auto makers’ complaints about battery-powered cars are backed up by findings contained in a progress report that the air board’s staff completed last month.
The report says that in 2003, a battery-powered family sedan is expected to cost about $22,000 more to make than a comparable gasoline-powered model. While smaller electric cars are less costly, the expense is driven by huge, heavy arrays of batteries required to power the cars.
Advanced batteries, such as nickel-metal hydride power packs, improve performance, but only a major technological breakthrough can bring costs down substantially, the staff report said.
That sort of breakthrough is unlikely for the next six or more years, according to three battery experts who assessed the state of the art and delivered a report to the air board in June. In the meantime, generous government subsidies will probably be necessary to help make the cars more affordable to motorists, air quality officials say.
Another drawback is that a battery-driven passenger sedan will probably travel less than 100 miles on a single charge. While some electric vehicles can go farther, 70 miles is a typical range under real driving conditions using advanced batteries for many of the vehicles, said Chuck Shulock, vehicle program specialist at the air board.
Battery-powered cars could be cost-competitive with internal combustion engine vehicles--when purchase and lifetime operating costs are included--once annual production reaches 100,000, air board officials say. But they concede that level of production isn’t likely for several years.
While members of the air board believe the technology is ready and reliable, they expressed lingering concerns about the high costs. The board directed its staff to meet again with auto makers, battery companies and other vehicle component manufacturers to chart a smooth transition to electric cars.
Those meetings will not result in a relaxation of the mandate, but board members hope they could lead to earlier introduction of the cars and ways to fine-tune the state’s rules, said Alan C. Lloyd, the air board’s chairman.
California has about 2,300 nonpolluting vehicles on the road now.
Electric cars do cause some pollution: the emissions from smokestacks at power plants used to recharge the car’s battery pack. But air quality officials say those emissions come to about 5 pounds of pollutants per 100,000 miles of driving--less than one-hundredth of the pollution from an average gasoline-powered car.
In the short term, the impact of electric cars would not be huge. If 10% of all new cars sold in the four-county Los Angeles region by 2010 produce zero--or virtually zero--emissions, the change would remove less than 2 tons of smog-forming fumes from the air daily, air quality officials say.
Over time, however, the impact gets much larger. Widespread use of zero-emission cars would slash smog-forming exhaust in the Los Angeles area 30% by 2020, air officials say.
The air board’s two-day session drew many electric car enthusiasts. “It’s a great car. We can go 140 miles on a charge,” said Jack Reynolds of Fountain Valley, who leased a General Motors EV-1 six months ago as a second car. “It’s part of our household and it works fine.”
