CLEAN air campaigners are once more at loggerheads with car makers over California鈥檚 controversial plan to force manufacturers to start selling electric cars by 1998. The trigger for the latest clashes is a report by an independent panel of experts which says that a new generation of advanced batteries will not be ready until 2000 at the earliest. The report will be sent to the Californian government this week.
Car makers hope that the report will persuade the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to defer the 1998 deadline. But clean car advocates say the report shows that electric cars will be ready to meet the target. Postponement would have far-reaching consequences. Several states on the East Coast of the US are following California鈥檚 lead, and other countries are watching closely.
California adopted its clean car regulations in 1990, in a bid to reduce air pollution. By 1998, 2 per cent of the cars sold by large manufacturers in California must be 鈥渮ero emission vehicles鈥�. Car makers have been pumping money into electric car technology while complaining about the short timescale.
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In August this year, under pressure from Pete Wilson, the Republican governor of California, the CARB appointed a panel of four independent experts to see whether battery technology would stop car makers meeting the 1998 deadline. According to the panel鈥檚 preliminary report, presented earlier this month, only lead acid batteries will be ready.
A number of more advanced batteries will miss the target. 鈥淚n a 鈥榗omplete success鈥� scenario,鈥� says the panel, electric vehicles with commercially produced, advanced batteries 鈥渃ould become available in 2000/2001鈥�.
Howard Hampton of Ford鈥檚 electric research division in Detroit believes the panel鈥檚 message is clear. 鈥淭he report reflects what we鈥檝e been saying all along,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e have no choice but to use lead acid batteries in 1998, and for a few years after 鈥� And we鈥檇 prefer not to use lead acid.鈥�
The car industry wants to wait for advanced batteries to come on line. Lead acid batteries take a long time to recharge, are heavy and bulky, and are only good for about 50 miles between charges, says Hampton. The industry says that consumers will not want electric cars until they can run 125 miles between charges. Hampton goes as far as saying that vehicles powered by lead acid batteries will give electric cars a bad name, so that people will not want them even when advanced batteries come along.
But Dave Modisette, director of the California Electric Transportation Coalition, says the industry is overreacting. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 think the report justifies a change in the deadline,鈥� he says. 鈥淚f anything, we were encouraged.鈥� He points to marketing surveys, especially by the University of California at Davis, which show that short-range electric cars will find a market.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 think there will be a delay,鈥� says Modisette. At most, he says, the CARB might reduce the percentage of electric cars that have to be sold in 1998. Allan Hirsch, a spokesman for the CARB, says that it is too soon to comment on the board鈥檚 response to the report. Its decision is not expected until early 1996.
The panel reviewed a number of technologies, including batteries that use nickel and cadmium, nickel and metal hydride, lithium, sodium and sulphur, and zinc and bromine. Although the preliminary report did not rank the batteries according to which would be ready first, the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, thinks the sodium-sulphur and nickel-metal hydride batteries will be first to reach the market.