Posted on 08/19/2003 4:07:19 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
PARK RIDGE, Ill. — California and the automotive industry settled their legal differences last week, setting the stage for the emergence of fuel cell cars and likely writing off any broad acceptance of battery-powered vehicles.
General Motors Corp., DaimlerChrysler Corp., Isuzu Motors Ltd. and approximately a dozen vehicle dealers agreed to drop their lawsuit against the state in return for new zero-emission-vehicle regulations that would no longer force automakers to build battery-powered cars.
"The key is the enactment of those [regulations]," said a GM spokesman. "Once that happens, all of us will dismiss the lawsuit and move forward."
Issued by the California Air Resources Board, the new regulations would be similar to zero-emission standards in New York, Massachusetts and Vermont, giving automakers more flexibility in the types of zero-emission vehicles they could sell. The flexibility would free manufacturers from building full-size battery powered cars, a mandate that most have been fighting for five years.
With the new regulations, industry experts said, it becomes increasingly unlikely that a major automaker will try to build a battery-powered car any time soon.'Probably the end'
"This is probably the end for those kinds of vehicles," said David Cole, director of the Center for Automotive Research and a Fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers. "What has happened is that the California Air Resources Board understands the economic realities. They know now they can't squeeze blood out of a turnip."
But California regulators, repeating a sentiment often expressed by electric-vehicle loyalists, last week mourned the apparent demise of battery-powered models. "Virtually everyone who has ever driven one of those vehicles loves it," said a spokesman for the Air Resources Board. "They run great; they're quiet and reliable. Unfortunately, the auto companies don't want to make them anymore."
The automaker sued in 2001 after California laid out a plan for them to sell a limited number of zero-emission vehicles by 2003. Calling the mandate unconstitutional, General Motors was the first to sue, and other automakers followed.
Automotive engineers called the battery the key problem. Unlike batteries in laptops and cell phones, which cost more than $1,000 per kilowatt-hour, electric-vehicle batteries had to achieve a cost ceiling of less than $100/kW-hr, which suppliers never reached. Also, energy density of electric-vehicle batteries hovered around 70 to 100 watt-hours per kilogram, which automotive engineers called unacceptable.
As a result, despite their quick acceleration and quiet ride, battery-powered vehicles lacked the range, quick recharge time and cost that the auto industry said it needed.
"The more we have found out about battery-powered vehicles, the less confident we are that a battery will ever be developed that meets the criteria of the auto industry," Cole said.
Automakers said that the shortcomings of the battery resulted in woefully low leases of electric vehicles. "Eight hundred leases in four years does not have the environmental impact that anyone needs," the GM spokesman said.
Regulators and environmentalists, however, never fully accepted the automakers' contention that it couldn't be done. "Most of the automakers vehemently opposed the rules and tried various ways to avoid them, including legislative lobbying and outright lawsuits," said the Air Resources Board spokesman.
Still, California's new regulations recognize that other technologies-including hybrid vehicles, cleaner gasoline-powered engines and fuel cell vehicles-are approaching the state's low-emission goals.
The new regulations call for automakers to start out toward a 10 percent sales goal with a combination of those types of vehicles by 2005, ultimately completing the percentage goal by 2008.
The wild card in the mix is the fuel cell-powered vehicle, which General Motors has said it plans to start selling by 2010. The company has even said that it wants to be the first automaker to sell a million fuel cell vehicles.
"Everyone now sees fuel cells as the holy grail," the GM spokesman said. "We just don't foresee the kinds of roadblocks that we saw with battery-electrics in terms of range and fueling time."
While the automotive fuel cell is considered a gamble, however, cleaner gasoline-powered cars (called PZEVs, for partial zero-emission vehicles) and hybrids are not. GM has said that it now has the capacity to build 1 million hybrids a year.
Analysts said last week that the state of California's acceptance of other low-emission technologies is a sign that the Air Resources Board and industry are coming together. "The settlement of the lawsuit suggests they've found some common ground," Cole of the Center for Automotive Research.
Still, California emphasizes, battery-powered vehicles will continue to be recognized for credit under its new zeroemission vehicle regulations.
"We've left it open," said the Air Resources Board spokesman. "If somebody wants to build a battery-powered car, they still can."
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How wonderful that we can still build things in this country because the government lets us.
it would appear to me that propane would be the most likely fuel simply because the pressures are easily manageable and the delivery systems exist.
To me, to focus upon cars as a way to start this market is terribly wrong. The risk is outrageous, because the cost of developing a proven safe fuel delivery infrastructure is astronomical for an enormous market that doesn't exist. IMHO, the natural initial market for fuel cells would be stationary propane applications in remote locations, where line losses and maintenance costs warranted a replacement. Then we could convert that system to LNG. Once the stationary LNG infrastructure was there, then an automotive system might make more sense.
I think that hybrid cars make a nice bridge technology to fuel cells. It creates the opportunity to develop the drive train for the day when the source is fully proven.
the cost of manufacturing all the batteries and disposing of their noxious contents
and, the cost and means of generating any electricity that might be used to charge them
and, the cost and means of production of any hydrogen source they might require.
When the math is real, these things are revealed as the BOONDOGGLE they really are.
Silence.
The A/C can take more power than the engine at highway speeds. The usual solution is (Surprise!) a small gasoline engine to run the air conditioner.
Imagine an all-electric battery car in a hot place like, say, Phoenix...
--Boris
So what do you think of the safety issue of all those people handling LNG?
Remember, it's pressurized to some 2,000 psi in order to become a liquid.
But somehow the public may be under the impression that a new, pollution-free energy source exists.
It's not true. We can't drill a hydrogen well. Hydrogen has to be manufactured, and it will necessarily require more energy to do so than the hydrogen produces.
We can't fool Mother Nature.
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