Smog-Free Vehicles Get Sidetracked
California’s bold bid to fill the highways with nonpolluting cars took a sharp detour Thursday as state air quality officials adopted a far more modest plan that places a heavy emphasis on so-called hybrid vehicles and calls for a slower rollout of zero-emission models.
The action by the Air Resources Board represents the most significant overhaul of the state’s clean-car program, launched 13 years ago to reduce tailpipe exhaust, the cause of most air pollution in California. While officials have telegraphed the changes for months, the final form of the revisions was approved Thursday. Under the new program, automakers must offer motorists thousands of hybrid cars beginning in 2005, with as many as 125,000 sold annually by 2010. Those cars incorporate batteries to assist a small gasoline engine, travel 50 to 70 miles on a gallon of gas, and emit about half as much pollution as a new gasoline-powered car today.
At the same time, California becomes the first state to mandate an auto fleet powered by fuel cells, which make electricity through chemical reactions and emit only water. Automakers must build a 250-car demonstration fleet by 2008, with thousands more such vehicles to follow by the end of the decade.
But that is a far more modest goal than the state set for itself in 1990, when it called for 10% of new cars sold in California this year to be emission free.
Alan C. Lloyd, chairman of the air board, said the changes are an attempt to maximize use of proven automotive technologies, to back away from ones that consumers have not embraced, and to provide incentives for new technologies that could result in a car with no tailpipe emissions.
The decision is tacit acknowledgement that the road to the smog-free car is much harder than anticipated when the program began. Indeed, the so-called electric vehicle mandate failed to produce the hundreds of thousands of battery cars that were required by this date.
Batteries, so far, have not been able to produce enough power to make electric cars perform like vehicles with gasoline engines.
The decision is also an attempt by the air board to align its policies with political and market realities. Carmakers have moved aggressively on their own toward the development of fuel cells. Toyota and Honda already have some of the cars operating in California, with more expected this year.
In January, President Bush announced plans to spend $1.7 billion over five years to explore ways to make fuel cell technology work in cars and to study how to produce and store hydrogen fuel.
Air quality officials also believe that the changes enacted Thursday will give California a head start in reducing carbon emissions from tailpipes, which is required under a separate program. California is the first state in the nation to set standards for carbon dioxide -- which many scientists believe contributes to global warming -- that is emitted from automobiles. The standards are set to take effect in 2009.
Reaction to the air board’s action was mixed among environmentalists as well as automakers. Electric-car advocates, the Los Angeles regional smog-fighting agency and some environmentalists praised the air board for rejecting the recommendation of its staff to drop the zero-emission vehicle mandate after 2008, but criticized the board for not requiring more purely nonpolluting cars.
In the end, three of the 11 air board members -- Dorene D’Adamo of Modesto, Contra Costa County Supervisor Mark DeSaulnier and Sacramento labor leader Matthew R. McKinnon -- voted against the changes, saying they represented a reduced commitment to nonpolluting cars.
However, representatives of the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council praised the air board for striking a balance.
“We can’t lose,” said the council’s Roland Hwang. “In the short term, consumers get more hybrids; and in the longer term, we are moving aggressively toward zero-emission vehicles by getting more electric drive trains on the road. We are still on track to get to zero emissions. It’s just that we may be taking a detour through hybrids.”
While the industry is freed from producing lots of battery cars, companies are required to build more fuel cell cars sooner than they would like. Those cars cost about $1 million each today, and might still cost $10,000 more than a gasoline-powered model after 20 years of development, according to the Air Resources Board. The regulation affects Toyota, Honda, DaimlerChrysler, Ford, GM and Nissan.
“They’re doing the right thing,” said GM spokesman Dave Barthmuss. “Providing myriad compliance options to allow more freedom for companies to pick the technology path that works best is good. We’re much more optimistic today than we were a few years ago.”
In the short run, the air quality benefits of the board’s decision will be negligible, with less than 1 ton of pollution reduced per day. That is because new and emerging gasoline-powered cars are getting cleaner. However, air quality officials said the real benefits accrue in the long term, when they hope most internal combustion engine cars can be replaced by new technologies.
