By Sharon Kim
Daily Bruin Contributor
California continues to have some of the dirtiest air in the
nation, with 95 percent of the state having air quality that failed
to meet federal or state health standards for air pollutants in
1998, according to CalPIRG.
“Air quality in California is going down,” said Mike
Bogdanoff, electric and fuel cell vehicles project officer in the
South Coast Air Quality Management District. “And in the next
few years, air quality will start to get worse unless something is
done about it.”
Even though cars generally have low emission rates, the number
of vehicles in California and the number of miles that people drive
are both on the rise, he added.
The South Coast AQMD estimates 1,600 people die prematurely each
year in the Los Angles County due to smog-related maladies.
Thousands more suffer from long term health effects like
emphysema and bronchitis.
In 1990, the California Air Resources Board passed the
Zero-Emission Vehicle Mandate, which required that two percent of
the vehicles sold in California had to be zero-emission vehicles,
or ZEV.
The program also stated that by the year 2003, manufacturers
would be required to increase that number to 10 percent.
Part of the 1990 ARB program included categories of vehicles,
such as low-emission and ultra-low emission vehicles, which
manufacturers could produce in place of ZEVs.
“The combination of all this must be 10 percent so that
manufacturers will only have to produce 4 percent of actual
ZEV,” he added.
Natural gas and hybrid electric vehicles also reduce the number
of ZEVs manufacturers are required to produce.
The ARB defines an electric vehicle as “any vehicle that
operates solely by use of a battery or battery pack.” Hybrid
electric vehicles use combination of combustible fuel as well as
batteries.
Because of a state mandate requiring that a certain percentage
of the vehicles purchased by the university had to be of
alternative fuel, UCLA Fleet and Transit Services acquired EVs and
hybrid EVs in 1999, according to Jerry Washburn, the fleet
operations supervisor.
“The electric vehicles are very good for going in areas
with lots of people where emissions from normal cars would cause
breathing problems,” he said.
But there are drawbacks to these alternative vehicles.
“The cars have a limited range of 60 to 80 miles per
charge, so they’re primarily run on and around campus,”
Washburn said.
The 10-year-old ZEV mandate changed in January, when the ARB
voted for modifications in the requirements of the program,
according to Jennet Osborn, spokesperson for ARB.
“The battery technology we expected to see didn’t
come to fruition in the time we expected,” Osborn
said.”We felt there would be more gain using other vehicles
that have very low emission levels.”
Bogdanoff said the modifications aim to make the laws less
stringent for carmakers.
“Car manufacturers think the program is unfair,”
Bogdanoff said.
It is difficult for manufacturers to make profit off of EVs
because in order for people to want to buy these cars, they must be
sold at a price close to the cost of production.
As a result, the ARB has tried to lessen the requirement for EV
production to accommodate the manufacturers.
“There were cubbyholes in the program so that manufacturer
could produce other types of vehicles to offset the 10 percent
requirement,” Bogdanoff said.
While the battle continues to set stricter environmental
standards for gasoline-driven vehicles, proponents of the electric
car emphasize the potential benefits of the widespread use of this
alternative automobiles.
David Kirsch, a visiting professor of management at the Anderson
School at UCLA who wrote a book on the history of electric cars,
said the public is wary of purchasing electric vehicles because of
their inability to travel long distances without being periodically
recharged.
“Apparently, people think they will need cars that can on
the spur of the moment drive to Las Vegas,” Kirsch said.
“How many people do that in a year?”
Kirsch added that people have misconceptions about electric
vehicles in general, that they are, for example, slow or difficult
to handle.
“Really, EVs are very fast and anyone can drive
them,” he said.