Californians are being taken for a ride by state clean-air regulators, who are bringing the rest of the country along. Decisions made by the California Air Resources Board early next year will determine whether we get the option of driving zero-emission, non-polluting cars soon, or whether we'll see smoggy business as usual from the car companies for another decade.
Many consumers would love to drive cars that reduce greenhouse gases and our addiction to oil, but the auomakers resist. Fortunately, the Air Resources Board has the power to compel them to make the clean cars society needs. Progress through regulation is nothing new: It took laws to get seatbelts, airbags and catalytic converters. It took laws to get average mileage standards up from 12 mpg to 27 mpg. It will take regulations to get clean cars.
The air board's first attempt to compel clean cars -- the zero-emission-vehicle mandate of 1990 -- put thousands of gas-free electric cars in the hands of consumers, who loved them. In 2001, however, the board started giving car companies partial credit toward meeting the mandate if they sold hybrids and other gasoline-dependent cars. Bad move. Automakers sued, asserting that because the 2001 standards included gas-burning cars, they were, in essence, fuel-efficiency standards. And only the federal government can set those.
At the same time, automakers were making inflated promises to build zero-emission hydrogen fuel cell vehicles -- if they could just have a few years more. So the board gutted the zero-emission-vehicle mandate in 2003 and essentially turned it into a hydrogen research program. General Motors dangled claims that hydrogen fuel cell cars would be competitive in showrooms by 2004. Daimler-Chrysler predicted that it would sell 100,000 fuel cell cars by 2006.
But since 2003, automakers have produced fewer than 200 hydrogen fuel cell cars, each costing about $1 million, with a fuel cell lifespan of two to four years and many technological challenges left to overcome.
A few major automakers are trotting out their hydrogen hardware this week at the Los Angeles Auto Show, claiming they'll lease small numbers of them to handpicked drivers in the next few years. In a deja vu to 2003, automakers are hyping the promise of hydrogen just as the air board is again revising the zero-emission-vehicle mandate. Behind the scenes, car companies have convinced the board's staff that they can't meet the goal of producing 25,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles after 2012, so the staff is suggesting that the board ease that requirement.
