Rewrite of Emissions Rule May Roll Out More Hybrids

California motorists are likely to see hundreds of thousands of hybrid cars, powered by gas and electric motors, on the road by the end of this decade under new zero-emission vehicle rules expected to be imposed by the state Air Resources Board later this month.

That’s a big change from the state’s original ZEV mandate in 1990, which called for California’s six biggest automakers to make 10% of their cars sold here emissions-free.

But over the years the ZEV mandate has been rewritten four times to keep up with changing technologies and automaker objections. Now, with the auto industry successfully fighting the board in court, there’s about to be a fifth rewrite.

General Motors Corp., DaimlerChrysler and Isuzu Motors last year filed suit in U.S. District Court in Fresno seeking to overturn the ZEV mandate on grounds that it was a barely disguised attempt to usurp the federal government’s exclusive right to regulate vehicle fuel economy. Judge Robert E. Coyle found a strong likelihood that the car companies would prevail in a trial and granted them an injunction that has resulted in this latest attempt to field a workable ZEV plan.

After a two-day meeting last month in Sacramento, board members suggested that they will revamp requirements at their next meeting April 24. ZEV watchers now expect the board to require automakers to produce lots of low-pollution vehicles and a relatively small number of zero-emission cars powered by fuel cell- and battery-powered electric motors.

“It will be OK if they just make battery electrics an option, but we don’t want to see them as a required component,” GM’s California issues spokesman Dave Barthmuss said.

Some GM officials have privately signaled a desire to drop their suit if the Air Resources Board plan gives the company options, rather than a mandated number of various types of emissions-free vehicles.

The problem with the air board setting minimum numbers of zero-emission vehicles, said Reg Modlin, director of environmental and energy planning for Chrysler, is “they’re not very good at picking technologies. They tried it with battery-electric vehicles, and it didn’t work.”

Air board members seemed to agree with automakers that battery technology had failed, and automakers expected them to approve a plan that pushed fuel-cell electric-vehicle development.

Instead, what emerged after intense lobbying by environmental groups and battery-electric car enthusiasts was a plan that still encourages fuel-cell development, but pushes for the use of battery-powered electric cars as a way to get some zero-emission vehicles on the road right away.

The board was divided last month on requiring a minimum of 250 or 500 fuel-cell cars from the state’s six top-selling carmakers in the first four years of the plan, which is now scheduled to take effect with the introduction of the 2005 models. Fuel cells use hydrogen and water to make electricity and emit only water vapor as exhaust.

Although automakers generally agree that the fuel-cell electric car is the vehicle of the future, the car costs about $1 million apiece to manufacture and still has lots of limitations that will take years to iron out. Car companies also point out that although they lease these test fuel-cell vehicles at $10,000 a month -- as Toyota Motor Corp. does with some University of California campuses -- it still represents a big loss.

Roland Hwang, senior policy analyst for the Natural Resource Defense Council, estimates that the state proposal is likely to call for the big six automakers to produce by 2008 a total of 250 fuel-cell vehicles, plus a number of alternative-powered vehicles.

Those alternatives, he estimates, could include 5,000 battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles; 195,000 “conventional” hybrid vehicles, such as the Toyota Prius sedan that recharges batteries for its electric motor with a generator driven by its gas engine; and 1.6 million “partial zero emission” gasoline cars rated as super ultra-low emissions vehicles.

The new “plug-in” gasoline-electric hybrids would have rechargeable batteries allowing drivers to go 10 to 60 miles in all-electric mode on a single charge before the gas engines took over.

Although the technology sounds intriguing, automakers oppose the idea. “It is asking us to package a full-service electric-propulsion system and a full-service internal-combustion engine system” in the same car, said Ben Knight, vice president of research for American Honda Motor Co. in Torrance.

Carmakers also could reduce the number of ZEV vehicles they must sell by using credits for early introduction of any battery-electric vehicles over the last dozen years. Industry sources say that Toyota and Ford Motor Co. are likely to be able to use their credits to ignore all ZEV requirements until the second phase of the program ratchets up the alternative-vehicle numbers starting in the 2009 model year.