California air rules key in hybrid, fuel cell vehicle debate (Originally Published 2003)

WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. February 21, 2003; Don Thompson writing for the AP reported that it's no coincidence the world's largest automaker chose California to showcase a fleet of futuristic low pollution vehicles it says will one day change the planet.

Nor that eight foreign and domestic automakers and four of the world's largest oil companies are teamed just across the Sacramento River from the state Capitol in an unusually cooperative venture to develop and test hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles.

Once again, California's pacesetting regulations are at the center of a national debate, this time over the role of increasingly affordable and popular hybrid vehicles. But General Motors is among automakers fighting California air pollution and auto efficiency standards while promising an eventual replacement for the internal combustion engine.

The debate has become sharply politicized.

The Bush administration has joined the automakers in a court fight against California standards they fear will spread to other states -- prompting harsh criticism from Democratic Gov. Gray Davis -- even as the Republican president promises $1.2 billion for research and development of the hydrogen-based technology.

President Bush said the generation born now could be driving the cars that will wean the world from the internal-combustion engine to a pollution-free dependence on the universe's most common element.

But skeptical California regulators and environmental groups say there's no need to wait to battle the state's legendary air pollution, because the technology exists now. And they note the hydrogen powering tomorrow's cars could just as easily come from fossil fuels as from nonpolluting sources.

The California Air Resource Board's staff abruptly withdrew its latest proposed zero emission vehicle regulations last week after clean-air groups complained major manufacturers could avoid selling any additional zero emission vehicles for a decade. Instead, the rules would have allowed some automakers to rely on "credits" for existing low-pollution vehicles, including golf cart-like neighborhood runabouts.

Now, the board staff is considering adding new requirements for "hybrid" or "partial" zero emission vehicles that use various technologies to boost efficiency and cut pollution from internal combustion engines -- and which are available and affordable right now.

"We're talking 2012 before significant numbers of (hydrogen-based fuel cell) vehicles are on the streets," said board spokesman Jerry Martin. "We're probably talking a generation away. Hybrids are here now."

Major U.S. manufacturers -- like General Motors at last week's media "tech tour" -- see hybrids as interim vehicles while they set their sights on Bush's vision of transforming America and the world to a "hydrogen economy."

"The more we divert our attention from that, the farther away we push our (fuel cell) development," said GM spokesman Dave Barthmuss.

Foreign-owned companies led by Toyota and Hyundai, however, are finding a growing market for affordable hybrids that can trim California's air pollution if they hit the roads in substantial numbers.

"There's going to be over three million of them (projected) by 2011," Martin said. "You get some fairly significant impact in a short period of time. It's a very cost-effective, very efficient savings that could happen right now -- is happening right now," in part because of the state's pollution regulations.

Toyota, for instance, is aiming an ad campaign at Californians touting its electric RAV4, gas-electric hybrid Prius and tiny zero emission e-com. By contrast, GM plans to make its full-size Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup hybrids available to the public next year, followed by the Saturn Vue in 2005, and to have hybrid versions of 12 of its models by 2007.

Still, General Motors officials said their Sacramento display of hybrid and fuel cell vehicles demonstrates that state regulations aren't needed, because GM already is irrevocably committed to a future of zero-pollution vehicles. Half the tour's six stops are in California, with visits to Los Angeles and San Francisco this summer and fall.

Developing hydrogen-powered vehicles "provides an opportunity to literally reinvent the automobile," said Larry Burns, the corporation's vice president for research and development and planning.

"Americans could be driving these vehicles in large numbers, and soon," said Beth Lowery, GM's vice president for environment and energy.

State regulators and clean-air advocates say they've heard such promises before, but the dates keep slipping away.

After all, the state's zero emission vehicle requirements would have kicked in this year had they not been blocked by automakers who successfully argued the state was impinging on federal fuel economy standards.

The revised rules being considered by the board's staff for possible adoption next month would replace those regulations, but the staff earlier recommended the timetable be pushed back to 2005.

Across the river in West Sacramento, GM and other major foreign and domestic automakers are working literally side-by-side in a state-sponsored California Fuel Cell Partnership to develop and test hydrogen-fueled vehicles.

By year's end about 60 test vehicles should be in local government fleets scattered around the state, said partnership spokesman Joe Irvin.

"We're talking about commercially viable (numbers) by the end of the decade in selected locations, like California urban areas," he predicted. For widespread availability, Irvin said, "we're talking a generation -- 15 to 20 years."

The now-deferred California regulations would have required that 10 percent of new vehicles sold in the state have zero or near zero tailpipe emissions, with a gradual increases to 16 percent by 2018.