The California Air Resources Board was featured prominently in the 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car. Their capitulation to big business stifled this country's first progress towards electric cars in this country.
They are about to do it again. This time to the plug in hybrid.
CARB is set to make rulings that will cripple the plug in hybrid conversion industry by requiring standards that will cost far in excess of the cost to convert a hybrid to plug in, effectively killing the industry.
Tomorrow is the last day for public comment. The ruling will come this Friday.
What makes me sad enough to almost weep is that no one here is going to pay attention this issue, because the inauguration is so much more sexy. And on a day when we need to be more engaged with our government's decisions, we will be less.
Please go past the fold to get educated and take meaningful action
This is my friend Daniel. He has devoted his life and considerable intelligence to saving our environment in what I consider to be the most effective way: by advancing the technology and business of energy and transportation. He has done considerable work for the solar industry and is now doing so for hybrids. CARB is about to kill his business.
Please read the fantastically written and informative article in the East Bay Express.
Next week, the California Air Resources Board is expected to adopt strict new regulations based on the theory that the innovative technology sold by 3Prong Power and other companies may be bad for the environment. [Green entrepreneurs] say that if the board adopts the new rules at its January 22 and 23 meeting, it likely will force them to shutter their business...
In addition, proponents of the nascent plug-in hybrid industry say the air resources board also may snuff out a key component of what environmentalists believe will be the next generation of eco-friendly cars, thereby hampering our ability to wean ourselves from foreign oil, avoid petroleum wars in the Middle East, and slow the potentially devastating effects of global warming.
To boil down the main issue quickly. The board is concerned about air quality issues that result from turning on your gas engine less frequently. It means your catalytic converter won't warm up as much and a thing called a gas canister could vent unburned gasoline into the air. A simple fix that the conversion companies have found is that if you simply tell the gas engine to fire up when the car is started then the catalytic converter can warm up and the unvented gas in the gas canister can be burned. This means that air quality issues originally cited against plug in hybrids are completely nil.
On top of the air quality issue being solved. CARB has a mandate to reduce GHG emissions. However, if they implement their proposed ruling they will cripple the plug in conversion industry and put these companies out of business. But the big auto makers can still play in the regulatory environment they want to create. Do you think consumer choice is best served when the innovators are blocked from the market?
The board wants to put in place testing requirements for each car which cost around $20,000 when the cost of a conversion is around $7,000. They want the conversion businesses to provide warranties on batteries that they don't manufacture. When the extra battery pack stops working the car simply reverts to being a standard hybrid.
We, as a community committed to a progressive society and an inhabitable planet, need to take action to voice our position to the board. Public comments end this Wednesday and the ruling come on Friday. I know there is a lot excitement around the inauguration. But this is action item that will determine the fate of green businesses and whether a market ever develops for the next generation of passenger vehicle.
Please consider taking 5 minutes right now to submit a comment on the CARB website here:
http://www.arb.ca.gov/...
You can see some comments that have already been posted here:
http://www.arb.ca.gov/...
You can read the comments from conversion company 3ProngPower to the CARB board here:
http://www.arboruscalifornia.com/...
You can read comments posted by CalCars.org, the non-profit that started it all here:
http://www.calcars.org/...
You can read about it on ecogeek here:
http://www.ecogeek.org/...
Of course, your personal words to the board will be most effective. But here some examples to get you started:
"I support CalCars.org and the after market Plug In Hybrid industry in their opposition to these proposed regulations. I urge CARB not to pass these regulations as currently written and to sit down at the table with all stake holders in the industry to arrive at a compromise solution that will allow for the Plug-In Hybrid industry to thrive."
Aother examples you may consider include:
"The number of plug-in hybrids is very small, a fraction of a percentage of passenger vehicles on the road. There is no reason to rush into passing contentious regulations for such a small number of vehicles."
"These regulations are missing the forest for the trees, the benefits to encouraging the continued development of Plug-In Hybrids far outweight the negligable cost to air quality that may arise from under-regulation at this point in time. The advantages include drastic reductions in green house
gases and developing a plausible alternative to imported oil as well as strong potential to actually improve air quality through zero emission driving."
"These regulations should be passed with a built in waiver for new small but growing companies that are building a very small number of vehicles. A waiver on the first 1000 vehicles sold for example would allow small business to continue to innovate while still providing the needed air quality protections once the industry is mature."
"Many of the concerns expressed by the CARB engineering staff can be easily addressed by maintaining the initial engine run sequence on startup that is currently programmed into all Hybrid Vehicles. Simply having this as the one and only requirment would alleviate nearly all the concerns raised by the CARB engineering staff without requiring any expensive testing and regulation."
"There is no hurry to pass these regulations, there are currently no major producers selling large quantities of Plug-In Hybrid cars in California. Please consider delaying these regulations until the industry is more mature and better able to achieve compliance."
"Part of CARB's mandate is to promote low carbon transportation options. CARB should be doing everyting in it's power to encourace Plug-In Electric vehicles, not spending it's resources trying to regulate them to death."
"CARB should use its available resources to fund the studies and testing of plug-in hybrid modifications through grants to Universities and non-profits, such as CalCars.org"
"CARB needs to do more studies to determine whether these concerns are really a problem in typical driving conditions, not under some unlikely laboratory worst case scenario."
"Warranty requirements should not be a concern of CARB so long as the vehicle emissions to not get worse once the parts not under warranty fail. This is likely the case with most after market plug-in hybrid conversions."
"CARB needs to sit down at the table with industry players, non-profits and other stake holders to come up with a balanced compromise between air quality regulations and allowing industry and innovation to thrive."
"In this recesionnary climate everything possible needs to be done to maintain and promote green collar jobs in California. This is not the time to be stiffling industry with new regulations."
"CARB needs to consider that climate change is a major threat to California and that reducing green house gases may trump the negligable increase in air pollutants that may arise under certain uncommon driving situations using Plug-In Vehicles."
"California needs Plug-In Hybrid technology to become mainstream more than it needs stricter emissions testing for Plug-In Hybrids right now."
For the five or so of you who do decide to take action before this dairy is buried and people can go back to oohing and aahing about how great the crowds were today, thank you.
For those of you who I can reach: If you have a network of people concerned about the environment, clean tech, or green jobs - please forward them the links below to make a public comment to CARB.
Please consider taking 5 minutes right now to submit a comment on the CARB website.
UPDATES:
Here is my letter that was printed in today's Oakland Tribune
Onerous standards
THE CALIFORNIA Air Resources Board dashed the first true progress that was made on electric cars in this country, as chronicled in the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car." They are poised to do it again, this time to the plug-in hybrid vehicle.
They are poised to make a ruling that will cripple the nascent plug-in hybrid conversion industry by imposing onerous testing and warranty standards that capital poor entrepreneurs cannot provide. In the process, they will violate their own mandate to reduce global warming pollution.
They are validly concerned about air pollution that can increase when a hybrid's gas engine is started less frequently. However, conversion companies have since found that simply having their software turn on the gas engine for a period whenever the car starts renders these air quality issues nil.
Given that the air quality issues are now gone, and with CARB's mandate to reduce global warming pollution, CARB has no rational choice but to work these conversion companies to find an equitable solution to keep plug-in hybrids on the road.
I'd rather not have to watch another documentary in five years about how CARB could have done the right thing but didn't.
In response to a question below I'd like to clarify what a plug in hybrid conversion is. You take your Prius to one of these companies for an after market conversion. They add software, batteries, beefed up suspension, a button that allows you drive in purely electric mode for 10-12 miles, and a plug in the back of the car so that you charge your batteries from any standard outlet.