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California air board looks at eased rules for plug-in electric cars
By Jim Downing - jdowning@sacbee.com
Published 12:00 am PDT Thursday, March 27, 2008
Story appeared in BUSINESS section, Page D1
Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board, said the state needs a wholesale revision of its vehicle emissions regulations. Brian Baer / Sacramento Bee file, 2007
The California Air Resources Board will consider a proposal today to relax state quotas for battery and fuel-cell vehicles in exchange for new standards designed to speed the introduction of so-called plug-in hybrids.
State standards now call for automakers to put at least 25,000 vehicles powered by batteries or hydrogen fuel cells on California roads between 2012 and 2014. Air board staff have proposed to allow automakers to cut that target by 90 percent in exchange for selling at least 75,000 plug-in hybrids, which are likely to be ready for commercialization more quickly.
Plug-in hybrids combine a small gasoline or diesel engine with a battery that can be recharged from an electrical outlet; in some designs, the car can run for 40 miles or more purely on battery power.
Several environmental groups, along with proponents of battery-powered vehicles, criticize the proposal as further backsliding on the state's "zero-emission vehicle" standards, which were adopted in 1990 as an air pollution control measure and have been revised several times since.
But Air Board Chairman Mary Nichols said Wednesday that arguments over the details of the policy up for review today may prove to be beside the point. She said the state needs a wholesale revision of its vehicle emissions regulations to mesh with its ambitious greenhouse-gas reduction goals.
Fiddling with the current zero-emission standards, she said, "is far from the major change that we need … to make a massive change in the fleet possible."
Nichols said she expects the board today to call for the staff to develop such a policy, a process that would take a year or more.
About the writer:
- Call The Bee's Jim Downing, (916) 321-1065.
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