CARB backs off a bit on ZEV Mandate, orders 66k PHEVs sold by 2014
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) voted last week to revise its ZEV (zero-emissions vehicle) Mandate that was first adopted in 1990 and has since been changed five times now. The newest revisions ease up on automakers, now calling for 7,500 zero-emission vehicles to be sold in California between 2012 and 2014, down from 25,000 that were called for in the last revision made in 2003. A zero-emissions vehicle includes a pure electric vehicle or one powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, though CARB also ruled that the its ZEV Mandate could be partially met with a new category of vehicles it calls Enhanced Advanced Technology Partial-Zero Emissions Vehicle, or Enhanced AT PZEV. These include plug-in hybrids like the Chevy Volt or vehicles with internal combustion engines that run on hydrogen like the BMW Hydrogen 7.
In addition to reducing the number of ZEVs that must be sold between 2012 and 2014, CARB also demanded that automakers sell at least 66,000 plug-in hybrids during the same time period. Ford is working on a plug-in hybrid Escape and GM a plug-in hybrid Saturn VUE, while Toyota is also developing a plug-in version of its popular Prius. While this goal seems somewhat realistic to us depending on how willing consumers will be to swallow the premium price of a plug-in hybrid, achieving 7,500 ZEVs sold in less than five years could be a stretch considering that not one of the major automakers is working on a pure EV to sell in the U.S. and there just isn't a strong enough infrastructure for delivering hydrogen to that many Californians at the moment. Nevertheless, 7,500 sold is easier to achieve than 25,000. These recent revisions indicate to some that CARB is slowly being neutered of its power as the feds work to regain control of setting the nation's energy policy. One set of standards for every state is what the automakers want, and for better or worse they may have it soon.
[Source: CARB, AutoblogGreen, Automotive News - sub. req'd]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Yar 12:49PM (3/31/2008)
Wait, how does California even enforce this? Whats to stop GM or Toyota from simply saying "No"? What are they going to do, shut down every single car dealer whose parent company doesn't meet the requirements? Throw hundreds (if not thousands) of working men and women out on the street?
Peoples Republic of California
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BassClef 1:17PM (3/31/2008)
What if these ZEV's are produced but not bought? Will Californians be punished for not complying with the CARB mandate?
rgseidl 1:34PM (3/31/2008)
Manufacturers that fail to meet ZEV quotas face stiff fines. The law also demands that such vehicles are priced "reasonably" to prevent manufacturers from sabotageing CARB's intent. In practice, this means cross-subsidies from other product lines, e.g. profitable SUVs and upscale pick-up trucks.
At best, the net result is a negligible number of extremely clean cars at the expense of a vast fleet of gas guzzlers.
Yar 5:45PM (3/31/2008)
So, California is going to fine a company thats based in Detroit? They don't have the jurisdiction. This is just crappy feel-good politics.
Throwback 1:16PM (3/31/2008)
I am all for low pollution vehicles, but how do you mandate sales? I was in sales for years and trust me , you can't "make" people buy something they don't want.
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D-GOD 1:25PM (3/31/2008)
People will buy gas-free practical cars.
That's a given, so don't worry, those sell themselves.
As for CARB, it sounds like a Federal system, proving to be a bunch of pushovers for automotive and oil lobbyists.
Shame on California for having such a "girlie-man" system, and the governor for being such a wimp, proving steroids really do make balls shrink.
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Julius 1:32PM (3/31/2008)
"People will buy gas-free practical cars"...
The problem IS practicality - if there's only one hydrogen station in the area and the daily usage cost is double or triple a PHEV, then is it really "practical"?
D-GOD 2:40PM (3/31/2008)
Hydrogen is NOT practical,
Its supported by the Oil companies so you area so you are locked into coming to a pump.
Uses 3 times the electricity a battery uses, and costs a million dollars a car.
They know they can't afford to build the CARB numbers, so they lobbied to lower them and fit the current situation i.e. Volt is coming out soon....
How convenient of timing.
Time to replace Californias worthless "FEMA"
Clean Air Resources Board should promote Clean Air.
Its called BATTERIES and clean power.
They fail repeatedly
BlackbirdHighway 1:55PM (3/31/2008)
I watched some videos of the EV rally outside the CARB meeting. I was impressed by the one lady who was saying she's been driving around in her EV, (a RAV4-EV, I think) for the past 6 years, and in that whole time, has not bought gasoline once! Sixty thousand miles of driving without gasoline!
Even if you prefer a gas powered vehicle, and certainly many do, you should be for this. If there were enough EVs on the road to make a dent in gasoline consumption, prices would be much lower for everyone out there who wants to keep driving a big SUV or high performance car.
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Kent Beuchert 2:22PM (3/31/2008)
It's funny watching Californians and their CARB pretend like they can actually alter the behavior of their citizens by making some pointless and uninforceable rules. California can't even manage to throw multiple murderers like OJ into the clink, but imagine that they can force their people to buy a particular kind of product. Regardless,
even it they did have the power they pretend to have (anyone can challenge California's attempt to regulate interstate commerce, which are expressly forbidden by
the Constitution - California would have no case - last week appeals courts throw out a state's self imposed requirement for a product in a hearbeat). california continues to play these little political drams, pretendeding tht they are helping the atmosphere, when, in fact the
only effect they've ever had was disastrous - they stopped nuclear plant construction years ago and now
pollute to the tune of 650 pounds of carbon (and a lot of other, worse pollutants) per megawatthour when they generate electricity, while nuclear rich Vermont produces practically nothing - 5 pounds per megawatthour, or 70 times less pollutants. California continues to live in their dream world and are right at home with Hollywood fantasies. Californians should secede from the union, and take their foul smelling air with them.
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psarhjinian 2:47PM (3/31/2008)
CARB has managed to clean up the air. We wouldn't have had meaningful emissions regulations (CARB predates the EPA by some years) and what we would have had would have been beholden to environmental knuckledraggers like Texas.
California, by virtue of being the biggest economy in the US by a wide margin, has managed to push environmentally friendly cars on other states because, quite frankly, it's more viable to make a car that meets, or nearly meets, California's emissions standards than to dismiss California's market in favour of the rest of the union.
And I'm sure California would rather like to secede, if given the chance and shown the benefits of doing so. They give far more to the rest of the US then they get, and a secessionist state would have even greater buying power and autonomy. Talk smack about California (and New York) all you want, but they're the moneymakers, not the rust-, grain- or Bible-belters in between.
chauncyg1 6:30PM (3/31/2008)
btw- California has already changed people's behavior. It has the lowest per capita electricity usage of any state: http://www.energy.ca.gov/electricity/us_per_capita_electricity_2005.html
This is because Californians have to take energy usage seriously.
The solar projects now underway will continue to keep California on the vanguard of energy efficiency in the U.S.
psarhjinian 2:27PM (3/31/2008)
California is by a large margin the biggest market in the US, and next to Germany and Japan, arguable the largest in the world.
If a company doesn't want to do business there, it's their choice, but it's also their funeral, financially speaking.
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SPG 3:16PM (3/31/2008)
So where do those old EV-1 powered S-10's sell again? Oh good, found the site.
I'm not getting my hopes up for anything else that brilliant anytime soon.
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spw 3:57PM (3/31/2008)
pretty tough goals... 66k plugin hybrids? Nobody but Toyota will be able to comply with that, and thats if Prius is an plugin hybrid by default...
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mk 4:54PM (3/31/2008)
For all this talk of plug in hybrids and batteries....
last i checked, batteries DON'T PRODUCE electricity. They merely store it.
You still have to generate it with something. Gasoline, Diesel, Hydrogen, Alcohol, something, and not all of those are very efficient fuel sources themselves.
The other option is charging. That just moves the generator/producer off site. To a power plant that likely burns coal, since no one seems to want to build nuclear power for anyone besides our foreign enemies, such as North Korea.
Wasn't California having rolling brown-outs and all sorts of problems with PG&E a few years back? What do you think plug in hybrid cars are going to do for the power grid and plants?
This stuff isn't magic or free, no matter how much people, and the government want it to be, and try to force it to be.
Forcing things like this with legislation and agency regulation usually makes things worse, not better. And mandating sales in the "free" market is complete lunacy.
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chauncyg1 6:18PM (3/31/2008)
A few thoughts:
California's emissions regulations trump federal regulations, as stated by the Environmental Protection Agency. Cali's rules were grandfathered in because they started regulating emissions first.
California produces a relatively large amount of their electricity from zero emission or renewable forms. This is set to grow as 10 solar power plants come on line in the next few years. This will produce as much power on a sunny day as 3 nuclear power plants: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/business/06solar.html
California has lead the fight for clean air for over 30 years and million of lives have benefited from this leadership.
Finally, as has been already stated, be careful what you wish for. Cali gives far more money to the country than it receives in return. A secession would hurt the US immensely. Instead of being angry at California, quite frankly, the critics should be grateful for all the leadership, innovation and money California has provided to the nation and the world. It is a very long list.
Julius 11:25PM (3/31/2008)
FWIW - California's GDP is about 13$ of the US as a whole - $1.7 Trillion vs 13.2 Trillion.
And alot of that comment that California has sent more money to the US than it has received is based on old data...
Per capita tax recepits in 2001 were $6847, while expenditures were $6106. In 2004, that reversed to $6292 receipts, 7223 expenditures. (http://www.calinst.org/pubs/CalShare2004-tables.pdf)
So I'd be careful in saying that California is better off than the rest of the US.
And besides, though California is 13% of the US, I don't see the rest of the country following suit re: ZEV mandates (as opposed to the CARB vs. EPA CO2 mandates). And a manufacturer could probably do ok with the remaining 87% of the market (not well, but ok).
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G.D. 3:09AM (4/01/2008)
Julius-- I believe you may have misread the chart you provided. The numbers you cite refer to California's budget deficit, not the relative amounts they give or receive from the federal government. If you scroll down to table 2 on page 3 of your doc, you will see the most recent data is 2004. For that year, California ranked last on return on investment, receiving .79 cents for every dollar given to the federal government.
Again, California gives much more than it receives.
Morgan Kelps 12:46AM (4/01/2008)
I sill think the chevy volt will be the dominant US hybrid. With a release in 2010 at about $40k, it is a sporty alternative to the tesla.
http://www.chevy-volt.net
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