California air board eases green-vehicle mandate

State regulators on Thursday relaxed a rule that called for at least 25,000 vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells or batteries to be on California roads by 2014, bowing to automaker complaints that those technologies are still too immature and costly for large-scale production.

But in a move aimed at dramatically cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decade, the California Air Resources Board also called for a wholesale restructuring of its vehicle emission regulations.

Still, Thursday's decision to reduce the number of zero-emission vehicles frustrated environmental, public health and electric-vehicle advocates, who said the board missed a chance to spur a reluctant auto industry to reintroduce battery-powered cars.

Electric vehicles from major manufacturers have not been available since 2003, when the air board slashed the number that automakers were required to produce and offered the alternative of making a comparatively modest number of hydrogen-powered vehicles.

"It's a disappointment," said Bonnie Holmes-Gen, senior policy director for the American Lung Association of California, after Thursday's decision.

Holmes-Gen and many others among the dozens testifying at the public hearing in Sacramento had urged the board to raise the existing standards, not lower them.

"They could have sent a strong message today," she said. "The numbers are important, and the numbers should be higher."

Mary Nichols, the air board's chairman, said Thursday's decision represents a realistic target that will promote battery, hydrogen and newly developed plug-in hybrid technologies.

"We're really going to need all of them" in the state's long-term effort to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, she said.

The new "zero-emission vehicle" regulations would require major automakers to put a minimum of either 5,357 long-range hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles or 12,500 battery-power vehicles on California roads in the years 2012-2014. Those targets will rise unless automakers also sell at least 66,000 so-called plug-in hybrids, which can be charged from a wall socket but also have a small gasoline or diesel engine.

It remains unclear what effect Thursday's decision will have on the 12 other states that have supported the previous zero-emission targets.

The air board's decision to restructure vehicle emission rules is aimed at streamlining state standards. Currently, California has three sets of regulations governing vehicle emissions: one for smog-forming pollutants, one for greenhouse gases and the zero-emission vehicle program modified Thursday. That one compels automakers to introduce certain types of technologies like fuel cells and batteries.

Thursday's vote called for the air board staff members to prepare a new emissions policy for adoption before the end of 2009 that synthesizes all those objectives.

Dave Barthmuss, a spokesman for General Motors, said he was generally pleased with Thursday's decision. But he said the board needs to be sure that next year's policy revision doesn't set radically different targets for automakers.

Proponents of "pure" electric vehicles, which are entirely battery-run, chafed at the vote to relax zero-emission standards. Automakers began releasing such vehicles in the late 1990s in response to California's original zero-emission standards adopted at the start of the decade. Those standards envisioned that as many as 10 percent of the state's new vehicles would be electric by 2003.

A sizable grass-roots movement puts much of the blame for the disappearance of those vehicles on the air board's later modifications to the zero-emission rules.

The board's 2003 decision to favor hydrogen fuel cells at the expense of battery vehicles is the climactic scene in the 2006 documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" Director Chris Paine was in the hearing room Thursday, collecting footage for a sequel on the international interest in electric-powered vehicles.

A lineup of electric vehicles – including a string of Toyota RAV4s and a Tesla Roadster – filled the parking spots in front of the California Environmental Protection Agency headquarters for the hearing.

Jay Friedland, legislative director for Plug In America, an electric-vehicle advocacy group, said the air board once again placed too much emphasis on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

"This thing is a gigantic shell game," he said.

Critics of hydrogen-powered cars point to the vehicles' durability problems and still-astronomical production costs, as well as to the need for building entirely new hydrogen-production and refueling systems.

Backers say costs will come down and infrastructure will get built, and note that hydrogen vehicles have the potential to mimic the long range and fast refueling of today's gasoline vehicles. Battery vehicles, by contrast, are slow to charge and have a somewhat more limited range. They're also expensive.

But they can be recharged from any electric outlet, and supporters say that even several-year-old vehicles cost less to operate than the most fuel-efficient hybrids on the market today.

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