AutoblogGreen

So this makes me wonder - if they're spending all this money to push through a 44-mpg mandate by 2020, and come to realize that it may not be technologically feasible, will CARB roll back on that mandate as well? What if, in their goal to get to a 44-mpg average, a "commuter car" costs nearly $40k - especially if those cars have to balance out a $70k pickup work truck? Really makes me wonder what they'll use to cart all that stuff Hollywood uses (lights, cameras, microphones, chairs, rigs, etc) around; and if that will mean my movies will cost $20 in the theater...

History suggests that CARB has folded to "technological and economic reality" before.

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Some sort of estimate of what this means would help put things in perspective.

For instance, displacing 7500 regular cars saves 4.5 million gallons of gasoline a year, assuming each car goes 15,000 miles at 25 MPG. That's about 107,000 barrels of oil saved per year.

I'm not sure about California, but the US overall consumes about 7.3 billion barrels of oil per year, so that's a reduction of 0.0015%. It's a start, but a pretty darn small one.

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"Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

The oil industry and the car manufacturers fooled CARB in 2003 with its promise that, if the ZEV mandate would dump EVs, hydrogen vehicles were "just around the corner." Funny how that "corner" just keeps getting further and further down the road, huh?

Now they've fooled CARB yet again by promising not only hydrogen vehicles, but also biofuels and hybrids. And this at a time when Tesla, Think, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Phoenix, Aptera --to name only a few-- are cranking up production of pure EVs, the most efficient, cleanest solution available!

Fooled a second time: shame on CARB!

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Grrr...

Well I guess this throws down the gauntlet for the free enterprise system and real demand for true (local) ZEVs to work their magic. Tesla and Aptera stand to do very well. Phoenix better change their business plan quick if they want to have a shot too.

After all, if enough people really do want ZEVs, someone will make them and do well financially in the process. The lack of competition only increases the lucrativeness. The hurdles are 1) making them acceptable to the general public (range, speed, price) 2) firing up the marketing machine to create demand for ZEVs. This second point is just beginning to happen via word-of-mouth. Once Tesla & Aptera have some cars on the road and more ready to sell, they would do well with some national commercials to get the word out. (Then again, with cars on the road, word-of-mouth will go into overdrive.) The "right tool for the job" motif could go far in combating the "big truck, big engine, king/queen-of-the-road, grunt, grunt" mentality.

In other news, anything from EEStor of late?

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I think its a great choice. Too many of the dreamers were unrealistic in selling alternative fuel vehicles in order to get stupid requirements passed into law. I guess they had some stock deals to do or needed an investor.

The Tesla is unrealistic for 99% of the driving population and probably will be forever. It cannot even meet the automotive x-prize requirements for amount of true pollution emitted over 100 miles.

The real hold up is that we all rushed forward with promises of hybrids and whatnot but the battery industry didn't. Hell even GM is being ridiculed in some areas because they have the audacity to believe they can get someone to tackle the battery issue.

Give it a few years.

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@2: You only included one side of the energy requirements your equation. Keep in mind the there will still be an energy source required to power ZEVs, so your estimated net savings would be less.

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Honda Clarity FCX

"These groundbreaking vehicles will be leased to Southern Californians starting during the summer of 2008"

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Well yes, I didn't include every aspect that should be considered. AutoBlogGreen doesn't like when a single comment runs into multiple pages.

I was just trying to get an idea of the scope of the CARB ruling in relation to the size of the auto market.

The number one issue for energy in relation to energy security is imported oil. The number one issue with global warming is coal. The number one issue with smoggy air in California is auto exhaust.

All three issues need to be addresses, and very little is being done on any of them.

California has mostly abandoned coal as an energy soure for electricity. There are no coal plants in California, but not all of California's electricity is produced in state.

The rest of the USA electric supply still largely runs on coal. We need to fix that. So far, our politicians are unwilling to even go so far as to impose a moritorium on new coal plants, let alone do what is really needed, which is to start systematically replacing coal plants with cleaner alternatives.

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Of course, the issue is what defines a "cleaner alternative". There's not much in the way of wind/solar/hydro out there - especially since we're dismantling dams and there's been opposition as to where to put windmills. And obviously, not 100% of our power as yet can come from these renewables; we still need power at night to recharge our vehicles and solar/wind can't do that effectively.

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These are politicians and bureaucrats at work. It'll change again once the appropriate palms have been greased.

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Ultimately, CARB is powerless. They can "mandate" zero-emission cars, with the accompanying threat that car companies not meeting the requirement won't be allowed to sell in California. Yet they also know, and the car companies know, that California would never actually shut them out of the state. If it comes down to brinksmanship, and the car companies say "we can't do it", then the state practically has no choice other than to relax the requirement. That's why CARB caved and caved again, and will always cave in to the big car makers.

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As a big EV fan, cutting down the number of EVs required to be sold doesn't bother me nearly as much as redefining a ZEV to include gas-powered vehicles like PHEVs.

I know batteries are not capacious enough yet, and capacitors never will be the solution, but that still doesn't mean we should delete the concept of a class of strictly non-polluting vehicles from CARB's regulations.

So even though my first electric car will likely be a PHEV, I think CARB needs to keep their eye on the future and not water down any incentives meant for vehicles that bring true oil (including french fry oil) independence by spreading them thinly over other vehicles.

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Won't Tesla, Aptera and Phoenix together MORE than satisfy this requirement?

Tesla, even at 1000/year by 2014 will have 5000 on the road, many of those in CA.

Aptera already has 1000 orders in CA as they transition into production, I can't think they'll be doing less than 600/year (another 3000 by 2014 as a VERY conservative guess)

What are Phoenix's numbers like? They don't have to be very ambitious at all to get to the 7500 number.

CARB is a joke! They should know more about the industry than any of us rubes on any blog, yet they make recommendations that totally fail to reflect either what's wanted, needed, or will be available. Now I'm getting all upset.

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Big Oil and Big Auto corporate lobbying at work.

Stall, stall, stall. That's all they do. The auto industry doesn't want to innovate until they are forced to. I bet Big Auto are making deals with Big Oil to keep us from oil-free cars as long as possible.

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I never really understood FORCING automakers to sell a certain number of ZEV's in the first place. That seems pointless. It doesn't address the true driving force of business, consumer desire, and gives carmakers a target they can go after on a battleground they know all too well.

I would have thought it would be better to subsidize the purchase of however many ZEV's you want to see on the road. Has anyone studied whether the government break on hybrid purchases helped propel them to the kind of mainstream acceptance they enjoy today?

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There is no way CARB can force me, as a consumer, to buy a ZEV that does not fit my needs. Therein is the major flaw of these mandates. The auto companies simply cannot guarantee that any ZEV vehicle they make will actually sell. And somehow I doubt CARB would frog march me into a GM dealership and force me to buy one at gunpoint.

Why some people don't understand this mystifies me. To some it has to be a conspiracy to keep ZEVs off the road, instead of simple consumer preference and an inability for the technology to meet those preferences.

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Cervus, if you offer it for a low enough price, people will buy dogpoop. An EV, even a strikingly inadequate one, is worth more than dogpoop. By mandating the sale of X, CARB is mandating that they be built (at whatever cost), then sold at whatever price the 7500th person (er, Californian) is willing to pay.
I agree that a demand-side incentive might well result in a better product, but that would cost the state money instead of costing the automakers money. ($10,000 rebate towards the purchase of 7500 EVs costs the state 75 million). Why would the state choose that?

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Some venture capitalists should buy out NUMMI and turn it into a PHEV and EV plant. Maybe contract out with Toyota like they do now to build a Toyota PHEV. Make Silicon Valley the new Detroit. Let's see if the market can lead the regulators this time (doesn't always happen that way but maybe this once it will).

I think at least the leadership of these companies needs to move somewhere else...I lived in Michigan for a while and at least for me wasn't the most inspiring place to live. Some great people there but it's still Midwestern and "different" there means "bad" or "weird".

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@blackbirdhighway:
There are two locations in California where PG&E operates coal fired plants: one in Kern county and one in Contra Costa county.

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@ goodcheer...

there's another way of making an EV look attractive - make a comparable gasoline model more expensive to use. And the easiest way to do that is to raise the price of gasoline. It has the added side-effect of increasing state revenues, and encourages less-consumptive behavior throughout.

And @ Mik Cal - corporate innovation is all good, but it'll go nowhere without a good business plan. Silicon valley is littered with the remains of innovative products which did not make it in the marketplace... and if there's no motivation on the part of the CONSUMER to buy a ZEV (how many EV1's were leased over its lifespan?), then any ZEV mandate will be doomed to failure.

Unfortunately, no politico will have the stones to actually suggest such a simple thing as a gas tax.

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