Electricity Gets Them There
I was disappointed to read comments suggesting that the California Air Resources Board might relax the zero-emission vehicle mandate (“State Takes Sharp Turn on Emissions,” Sept. 15). I was more disappointed, however, that this article appeared to be an open forum for the always-recalcitrant auto manufacturers to express their biased views on the success of the electric automobile.
I drive an electric vehicle every day and find it quite adequate for my needs. Its factory-equipped lead acid batteries allow a top speed of more than 75 mph and better acceleration than many similar gasoline vehicles.
The suggestion that zero-emission vehicles are not needed because of advances in technology being used in gasoline vehicles is misleading. It does not take into account the upstream sources of pollution from gasoline vehicles, which are in themselves a major contributor to both air and water pollution. Nor does it note that these cars still generate prodigious amounts of greenhouse gases.
Mike Kane
Newport Beach
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Owning an electric car is like death by a thousand cuts, most of them inflicted by the press. General Motors and the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers--and their well-oiled public relations staffs--deserve the remainder of the credit. Your article repeats many of the products of this misinformation campaign. The quote from Greg Dana of the AAM that “the battery electric car is not going to be viable any time soon. It is dead on arrival” may well be correct because of the cabal of interests that have served to kill the notion of a zero-emission vehicle requiring no oil, but it is right for all the wrong reasons.
When the ZEV mandate was announced a decade ago, I hoped to do my part by buying an electric car for my in-town driving. Fewer than 1,000 EV1s were built by GM despite a long, unfulfilled waiting list, yet the small manufacturing base spawned the most vigorous owner’s club I have witnessed. No, the EV1 is not a car for all things or all people. Neither, in fact, are most cars. What the EV1 can do is accelerate more briskly than 90% of the cars on the road; have a lower operating cost than 99% of the cars on the road; make less smog than a gasoline-powered car that is never driven; and never require the owner to visit a gas station.
Robert Siebert
Orange
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Alan Lloyd, chairman of the state Air Resources Board, states, “We put a lot of faith in battery electric vehicles ... but, in spite of significant efforts, batteries have inherent limitations.” Indeed they do, Mr. Lloyd, and you and your colleagues were told that from Day 1 by engineers and scientists in the automotive industry. I have a long memory, and hardly a day went by in the early 1990s when this debate was raging without the environmental crowd blindly accusing the industry of withholding cleaner technologies and/or of collusion with the oil industry.
This article further illustrates what I see as a general lack of scientific literacy in much of the environmental activist community. That electric power that they had planned to plug into would have come from coal-, gas-and oil-fired plants--huge, smoking, belching plants. Those who are quick to tar those in the automotive industry as avaricious, environmental philistines would do well to gracefully accept the fact that those who run these businesses share our environmental concerns as well. They don’t enjoy breathing dirty air any more than we do.
Jamie Bernier
Big Bear Lake
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EVs can be real-world vehicles. I drive a converted BMW 2002. The average U.S. driver covers 25 to 35 miles per day; just plug it in at night. Therefore, all hybrids must be required to have a 50-mile electric range--a plug-in hybrid. The benefits will be that most will drive pollution-free during daily runs and will have a longer range for trips. Batteries will improve for those who wish to drive all-electric. Universities build SUVs that do this; GM won’t. Why?
Leo Galcher
San Clemente
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Your article suggests that “ultra-clean gasoline cars are approaching near-zero levels of emission.”
Here’s the challenge: I’ll start my electric Ford Think City (recently canceled by Ford) in a closed garage. You start one of those ultra-clean gasoline cars inside another closed garage and call me in 15 minutes on your cell phone to let me know how you are doing.
Marc Geller
San Francisco
