3 March, 1998
As you know, Massachusetts is in the lead when it comes to Electric Vehicles. We have an excellent E-V Demonstration Program run by the Department of Energy Resources and a state government committed to cleaner vehicles in advance of federal mandates.
Recently, Bill Moore, editor in chief of EV-World, an internet news magazine targeting electric vehicles, pondered our US carmaker's sudden interest in zero emissions. We reprint it here with permission.
Mark Richards
Editor
by Bill Moore
Editor in chief, EV-World
OMAHA, Ne -- 5 February 1998. After years sitting on engine technology that purportedly reduces auto pollution by an estimated 70%, Chrysler, Ford and General Motors this week agreed to begin building cleaner cars, offering them for sale starting with the 1999 model year.
On the surface, the EPA-endorsed National Low Emissions Vehicle (N-LEV) standard sounds like a good thing. It insures a uniform regulatory environment in at least 45 of the 50 states. As a result, car makers no longer have to fear being compelled to build numerous versions of the same car in order to comply with a potential patchwork quilt of separate state environmental air quality regulations. To paraphase a certain car commercial, "Simpler Is Better," at least from Detroit's perspective.
So why am I not smiling at the prospect of much cleaner cars? Isn't that the whole point of EVs , HEVs and FCEV, to reduce emissions? Certainly, seventy percent is a significant number. But somehow, I find little comfort in it because, ultimately, it doesn't address the real issue confronting us and that is the consumption of finite, carbon-rich fossil fuels.
Ignoring the fact that Detroit has supposedly known about this clean engine technology for years and for reasons known only to itself didn't see fit to immediately begin installing it on every car rolling off its assembly lines, it seems to me that N-LEV only seeks to postpone the inevitable. At some point in the not too distant future we are going to have to wean ourselves off petroleum. For one thing, there are reputable predictions that global production of cheap oil will peak just after the turn of the century. While proven global reserves are forecast to last at least until about 2045, that oil will become increasingly harder and harder to recover and cost more, lots more.
But even if there were inexhaustible oceans of oil available, we would be fools to continue to burn it in such an abysmally inefficient manner. The Japanese National Institute of Environmental Studies did an analysis of the relative efficiencies of our current petroleum based transportation system. It found that a litre of crude oil at the wellhead would eventually power a conventional internal combustion engine car 20 km or about 12 miles. That same litre of crude, used to power an electric utility generator and eventually recharge an EVs batteries, would move that vehicle 50 km, two and half times times further than the ICE vehicle.
Put another way, our electric car would cover the same 20 km using less than half a litre of fuel while producing zero emissions locally. Better yet, that same EV can be recharged from a wide variety of different energy sources including renewables like hydro-electric, wind, solar, and geothermal.
Nothing I've read about N-LEV says anything about improving the thermal efficiency of these new cars. Their emissions might be reduced, but they are still going to consume essentially the same amount of fuel as they always did. While this must be a comfort to oil company sharefolders, it doesn't do anything for our international balance of payments nor our vulnerability to import oil disruptions.
The best that can be said for N-LEV is that it may serve as a societial bridge, albeit a rickety one -- to cleaner, more efficient technologies. There is little question there will have to be significant changes in our transportation infrastructure before EVs become commonplace. The new, cleaner HEVs and FCEVs of tomorrow will require an infrastructure where convenient access to methanol and hydrogen refueling stations is as commonplace as your local Texaco or Chevron gas station is today. Changes of this magnitude will take time and lots of money. N-LEV is a compromise meant to buy all of us -- consumers, car maker and oil companies alike -- time to adapt to the energy realities of the 21st century. We can only hope that we don't use it as an excuse to procrastinate, or worse, deny the coming realities.
Of the twelve northeastern states the car companies and the EPA lobbied, only New York, Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine refused to accept N-LEV. These four states still collectively insist the car companies adher to tougher air quality standards that require them to sell increasing numbers of zero emission vehicles in their states in the coming years. One has to admire our hardnosed Yankee neighbors for sticking by their guns, for in doing so they are not only compelling the car companies to do something they should have done years ago, namely installing clean engine technology on their cars, but more importantly they are forcing Detroit to come up with products that are truly worthy of the 21st century.