Zero-Emission Front Faltering
As California gets set to launch its unprecedented Zero-Emission Vehicle Mandate, two key East Coast states that once marched with it in a united effort to push development of electric-powered and other nonpolluting vehicles are falling behind.
The result could be a delay of several years in the launch of zero-emission vehicles in New York and Massachusetts.
Those states, along with Vermont, had adopted California’s 2003 ZEV Mandate as their own under a federal law that sets California’s emissions standards--the nation’s toughest--as the alternative to the lesser federal requirements.
But now, New York and Massachusetts air-quality officials are proposing a revised program that could delay introduction of zero-emission vehicles in major Northeast markets until 2007.
And to the dismay of many in the environmental and electric car communities, the states are acting with the encouragement of the California Air Resources Board, or CARB.
In lieu of the battery-powered electric cars and trucks that so far are the only vehicles that can claim zero emissions at the tailpipe, the two states would encourage use of technologies such as hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles and low-sulfur diesel fuel for truck engines.
Environmentalists view the delay as capitulation to an auto industry that has largely repudiated battery-powered electrics and is lobbying instead for acceptance of vehicles such as the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight hybrids, which offer high fuel economy and qualify as ultra-low-emission vehicles yet still burn hydrocarbons.
“To the extent the CARB might have encouraged the Northeast program and the delay, well, we disagree,” said Sandra A. Spelliscy, general counsel for the California Planning & Conservation League in Sacramento.
“We’ve always thought that having the Northeast states go along with California is important,” she said. “We do need the economies of scale, especially as California’s program has been scaled back.”
Imposing a ZEV requirement simultaneously in California and the Northeast would help foster national interest in electric cars and trucks, said Roland Hwang, senior transportation policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco.
California alone accounts for 10% of U.S. car sales; the three Northeast states would double the size of the market that would be exposed to electric vehicles.
The delay being proposed in the Northeast stunned many, including Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, an enthusiast of electric vehicles who has insisted that his state adhere to the California standards.
“California’s rules still do have requirements for some electric vehicles, so they are better than nothing,” Dean said in a lukewarm endorsement of the complex ZEV Mandate that has gone through numerous changes in the face of heavy auto-industry lobbying in the last two years.
Getting true zero-emission vehicles onto the roads “is the key to a long-term strategy to rein in vehicle emissions,” said Peter Iwanowicz, environmental health director for the American Lung Assn. of New York.
“Any delay is a setback,” he said. “Our reading of this plan is that now the auto makers can get away from doing anything in advanced technology--battery electric vehicles, fuel cells, hybrids--until 2007” in New York and Massachusetts.
But officials in California say delaying the ZEV mandate in the East is a necessary strategy.
Members of the California Air Resources Board are “concerned about the potential for problems if we have a [bicoastal] roll-out of the ZEV mandate in 2003, so the board has encouraged me and others in the staff to work with the other states to ensure a successful roll-out,” said the board’s executive officer, Mike Kenny, in Sacramento.
“It would be a problem if we didn’t have a staggered start,” he said. “We need California to go first and have the Northeast states follow a couple of years later.”
The concern is that an unprepared public might reject alternative vehicles, said board spokesman Jerry Martin.
“The thing we are most afraid of is some sort of failure at start-up, so some of the issues that the auto makers bring up are real,” he said, referring to their arguments for postponing sales of battery electric vehicles outside California.
“California has a large number of electric vehicle recharging sites because the utilities here have been preparing for ZEVs for some time,” Martin said. “And the public in California is more familiar with electric cars. We’ve been bombarding them with information for 10 years. But a lot of that groundwork hasn’t been done in the Northeast, and it needs to be done before a ZEV rule has a chance of being successful.”
That argument doesn’t sit well with clean-car enthusiasts.
“You have to have general awareness for there to be a market,” said Sandy Kapteyn, a Pasadena computer consultant and fan of electric vehicles, who gave up on gasoline in 1991 when she and her husband had a two-seat Honda CRX coupe converted to electric power.
Kapteyn now drives a General Motors EV1, the futuristic two-seat, battery-powered electric that the giant auto maker launched with some fanfare in 1996, only to declare it a failed experiment last year.
“GM’s whole claim is that there are not enough people interested and there’s not enough of a market,” she said. “So if California requires some electric cars next year but Massachusetts and New York don’t, there will only be a small, one-state market, and the car companies will be able to keep saying there’s not enough interest.”
Officials in New York and Massachusetts, however, say they need the four-year delay to 2007 to lay the foundation for a support system for electric vehicles.
“We’ll still maintain our consistency with the California mandate; it’s just that we’ll also have a transition period that we need,” said Gina McCarthy, assistant secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs.
California’s ZEV plan begins with the 2003 model year--which could start as early as next month for companies such as Toyota Motor Corp. and General Motors Corp., which are introducing selected 2003 models then.
The state’s mandate requires that at least 10% of the new passenger cars offered for sale in California by each of the major auto makers meet emission standards that are far cleaner than those met by vehicles today. (Light trucks--pickups, minivans and sport-utility vehicles--will be included in the tally in later years.)
A minimum of 2% of the clean vehicles must be rated as nonpolluting ZEVs.
“In terms of preparing the market for battery-powered electric vehicles, 2007 is just too far away,” said Hwang, the Natural Resources Defense Council analyst.
“We can live with what California has done, but the Northeast plan has us very frustrated. It goes too far in terms of rolling back the starting date for pure ZEVs.”
*
Times staff writer John O’Dell covers autos for Highway 1 and the Business section. He can be reached at john.odell@latimes.com.
