Editorials

California’s clean air board debated Thursday whether to scale back regulations that would require automakers to market thousands of electric vehicles in the state, starting in 2003. 

The Air Resources Board’s staff recommended a series of complicated changes that would cut the number of electric vehicles initially required by the regulations from about 22,000 to as few as 4,650. 

“We would rather start small and build than have an overly ambitious program that results in unsold vehicles,” said Charles Shulock, a vehicle program specialist with the board. 

Environmentalists and health groups urged board members to beef up the staff proposals, but the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers argued that electric vehicles would be too expensive and too limited in range to sell or lease in significant numbers. 

“Electric vehicles with broad consumer appeal are an idea whose time has come and gone, much like eight-track tapes, Betamax and New Coke,” said Josephine Cooper, the association’s president and chief executive officer. 

She urged the board to put off consideration of the changes for 60 days. She said that would give automakers and the board time to discuss an arrangement under which the regulations would be suspended for a period of years and the staff proposals would be tested under agreements between the board and automakers. 

Suspending the regulation would prevent other states from implementing them, she said. 

States have the option under federal law of adopting California’s clean air requirements or following the usually weaker federal standards. 

“We are going to push vehicles out there that may not be sold,” Cooper said. 

But board member Matthew McKinnon rejected the idea of a delay. “We have cut this to the bone,” he said. “What the 60 days might do for me is convince me that we need to add to the (staff’s) numbers.” 

The board’s executive officer, Michael Kenny, said automakers did not fully live up to earlier agreements with the state under which they leased a few thousand electric vehicles to Californians. 

Currently, the regulations require that zero-emission vehicles or extremely low-polluting vehicles make up at least 10 percent of the new cars and light trucks offered for sale in California by major manufacturers, starting with 2003 models. 

At least 4 percent would have to be zero-emission vehicles. 

With current technology that would mean auto companies would have to produce about 22,000 electric vehicles the first year. That number would jump to about 38,600 if the companies decide to market only so-called city electric vehicles or neighborhood electric vehicles, which are smaller and have less range than full-size EVs. 

Under the staff proposal, those numbers would drop to 4,650 to 15,450 electric vehicles, depending on the mix of vehicles involved. 

The staff proposals include a long list of incentives designed to ease the impact of the regulations on automakers and increase the variety of vehicles that could help a company meet the state’s requirements. 

For example, they would allow low-polluting hybrid vehicles that have both gasoline and electric motors and can get at least 20 miles between battery charges to count as zero-emission vehicles. 

Another change would change the definition of major manufacturer to a company that sells 60,000 vehicles a year in California instead of 35,000. 

Bonnie Holmes-Gen, a spokeswoman for the American Lung Association, said environmental and health groups wanted the board to increase the number of zero-emission vehicles required under the staff plan so there would be 40,000 on the market in 2010. 

Jerry Martin, an ARB spokesman, said the staff proposal would result in 8,000 to 9,000 zero-emission vehicles in 2010. 

The environmental groups also urged the board not to classify hybrids as zero-emission vehicles and to include trucks and sports utility vehicles weighing up to 8,500 pounds in the vehicles from which the 4 percent and 10 percent requirements would be calculated. 

S. David Freeman, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, urged the board to reject the staff proposals, saying that automakers hadn’t really tried to market electric vehicles. 

“Have you seen television ads with good looking people wrapped around electric vehicles?” he asked reporters. “Until you do they are not trying to sell them.”