1990 Vote Was the Spark That Drove Electric Cars
It was visionary. It was gutsy. And to many, it seemed incredibly foolhardy.
The California Air Resources Board was already renowned for setting the world’s strictest standards that kept forcing the auto industry to make cars cleaner and cleaner. But this time, nearly seven years ago, its leaders had something revolutionary in mind: Exhaust-free automobiles.
The state’s smog fighters believed in the promise of electric car technology. Indeed, they had more confidence in the ingenuity of the car companies than the companies appeared to have themselves. But to them, the industry was recalcitrant, and getting it in gear would take more than a mere nudge, it would take a hard shove.
On a September day in 1990, the Air Resources Board adopted a pioneering mandate that would require 2% of new cars sold in California beginning with 1998 models to be exhaust-free--essentially a requirement for electric cars. That day, it was almost as if the board members had their fingers crossed--they hoped that the auto makers would come through, but they were far from secure in knowing that they could.
But it turned out to be the spark that electric cars needed.
Last week, as General Motors proclaims with great fanfare that “The Electric Car Is Here,” no one is more relieved and expectant than the state officials who made that giant leap of faith in 1990. Without California’s mandate, unanimously adopted in the waning days of the administration of Gov. George Deukmejian, the first mass-produced electric cars in three-quarters of a century might never have made it to the showroom floor.
The Air Resources Board’s bold move “jump-started innovation” and “may prove to be the most pivotal event in automotive history since Henry Ford introduced mass production eighty years ago,” said Daniel Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis in his book, “Future Drive.”
Ironically, the mandate that helped drive the EV1 into the showroom--and offerings from the other manufacturers starting next year--no longer exists.
In March, the air board grew doubtful about the willingness of consumers to accept the cars, which carry steep price tags and have a limited travel range. Facing intense pressure from the auto industry, the board replaced the sales quotas through 2002 with voluntary production goals. In 2003, however, quotas do kick in, requiring one of every 10 new cars sold in California to be exhaust-free.
“There’s a certain amount of irony about this. They got the freedom not to meet an absolute number of vehicles in 1998, and now we have General Motors rolling out a zero-emission vehicle early,” said Bill Van Amburg, a vice president at CALSTART, a consortium of California businesses and government agencies developing advanced transportation technologies.
“Our hope is the [state mandate] got them started and the competitive pressures will push them the rest of the way--faster and further forward. 2003 is not that far way and the mandate is still a pretty big hammer.”
Yet industry analysts remain skeptical that the air board’s 10% sales target for 2003 is achievable, and many observers assume that the board will remove or weaken that, too. The air board under Gov. Pete Wilson has been considerably less aggressive in regulating industries in recent years, and the pressure from auto industry lobbyists is likely to return.
Air Resources Board Chairman John Dunlap said that won’t even be an issue if electric vehicles win over consumers.
“At this point we are not even talking about any kind of change in 2003,” said Dunlap, Wilson’s top air quality aide. “We will know within 90 days of the introduction of the EV1 what the consumer reaction is going to be. We hope this vehicle is wildly successful.”
There remains no doubt that the internal combustion engine will rule the road for years to come. Over the next couple of years, electric vehicles will remain little more than demonstration fleets of a few thousand cars, largely for the auto makers to gauge how consumers react and the cars perform.
But if California is to win its war against smog in the first decade of the 21st century, it is reliant on GM’s sporty little two-seater, electric mini-vans and other models becoming more than just a novelty for green-minded consumers.
In their initial few years, the cars will have minimal impact on air pollution. The exhaust eliminated by a few thousand vehicles amounts to a tiny fraction of 1% of the Los Angeles region’s emissions.
But to meet a 2010 deadline to clean the air, Californians by then must be driving 800,000 exhaust-free cars or find other ways to meet federal health standards. And since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is about to tighten its standards, California will have to clean up even more vehicle exhaust than planned.
“It’s essential that this program be successful. All our modeling and all our analysis shows zero-emission vehicles have to penetrate the California fleet. We cannot project attaining the current [smog] standard without them,” Dunlap said.
Although cars are dramatically cleaner than 20 years ago, the sheer number on the roads still makes them the No. 1 source of smog. About 80% of smog-forming emissions in the Los Angeles Basin are related to petroleum fuels, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District.
To charge electric car batteries, power plants will produce additional electricity. But the pollution attributable to that is far outweighed by the exhaust from gasoline-powered cars. Southern California power plants run on fairly low-polluting natural gas and are equipped with highly efficient smog control technology.
Even the cleanest gasoline car of the future will emit three to 10 times more nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons than an electric car’s power-related pollution. Nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons combine in the air to form ozone, a key ingredient of smog.
Also, traditional cars often deteriorate into gross polluters, while an electric car always remains emissions-free. A typical car on the road today emits hundreds of times more pollutants than the fumes from producing the electricity to recharge a car.
Despite the $500-a-month lease cost and the inconvenience of frequent recharging, battery-powered cars offer other advantages to consumers. They are quiet, need less maintenance and can be re-powered at home--and for less money.
But opponents of the mandate, including many conservative state legislators, say that if the cars are so attractive and the technology so promising, auto companies would be clamoring to market them without the need for a government order.
Oil companies--although they are no strangers to government assistance themselves--say electric cars are getting the unfair advantage of subsidies through tax breaks, research dollars and rebates. They complain that subsidies to buyers of electric cars, which reach as high as $9,000 per car, are just part of a wide array of government programs on behalf of various alternative fuels costing some $2.7 billion by 2000.
“The oil industry is not in any way opposed to electric cars, but we are opposed to subsidies and mandates for any type of alternative fuels. What we want is a level playing field,” said Jeff Wilson of Western States Petroleum Assn., an oil company trade group.
The state air board and Southern California’s AQMD have a long history of forcing industries to use new technologies--dating back to vapor control at oil refineries in the 1950s and catalytic converters and crankcase devices on cars in the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1988, when the AQMD began crafting a regional smog battle plan that set its sights on zero-emission vehicles, electric car technology was far inferior to today’s.
But the AQMD’s effort caught the eye of engineers at AeroVironment, a firm in smog-plagued Monrovia known for its innovative ultralight aircraft and solar race cars. Dubbing their secret mission Project Santa Ana for the winds that drive smog out of Los Angeles, the AeroVironment team gained the financial support of General Motors and began piecing together an electric car that became the Impact.
Unveiled by GM in January 1990, the Impact was hailed as revolutionary, with electronic components and aerodynamics that broke records for battery efficiency and speed. Less than nine months later, the Air Resources Board, in an 8-0 vote, adopted its landmark zero-emission mandate. At the time, board Chairwoman Jananne Sharpless expressed cautious optimism: “We took a gigantic step forward today. We will have to wait and see if we put all the right pieces together.”
As it turned out, the mandate “galvanized the auto industry and a lot of other technology companies into thinking there is a good chance that the future will be electric,” Sperling said. “Given the increasing competitiveness of the industry, big companies can’t afford to lay back on this one. What we’re talking about potentially is the future of the industry.”
