LA County to Make Hybrids the Standard for Non-Emergency Passenger Vehicles
16 November 2005
The Los Angeles County, California, Board of Supervisors is modifying its ten-year old Clean Fuels Program to make hybrids the standard for new non-emergency passenger sedans acquired to conduct routine County Business.
The original Clean Fuels Program, approved in 1995, directed the transitioning of as many County-owned vehicles to clean fuels as possible within the limits of service delivery requirements and departments’s financial resources.
At that time, alternative fuel vehicles were limited to methanol, ethanol, propane, and natural gas.
The emergence of hybrids (gasoline or diesel, in the Board’s view) provide a more viable and cost-effective path to achieve the emissions reduction goal. (In the supporting document, sponsors Zen Yaroslavsky and Mike Antonovich cite the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s analysis that the 5-year cumulative total cost of ownership for a hybrid vehicle sedan is almost $8,000 lower than the total cost of a traditional gas powered vehicle.)
Among the many benefits of this technology are: improved fuel mileage, lower exhaust emissions, reduced noise pollution, improved performance, unrestricted driving range, and no special requirements for refueling.
The modification to the Clean Fuels Program directs Department/District Heads to, whenever feasible, acquire hybrid passenger sedans as they replace the gasoline powered passenger sedans, beginning no later than July 1, 2006; and instruct the Director of Internal Services to submit a revised Clean Fuels Program policy, including a report on costs, to the Audit Committee for review and approval.
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Yet another non-solution. Considering the level of demand, I doubt they could lay their hands on enough Priuses or Civic Hybrids to fullfill every need, and there are plenty of other vehicles out there that get better mileage than the larger hybrids available.
This will make them look good to the uninformed public, but hybrids are not the only answer. Using E85 in utility vehicles as much as possible and setting a minimum of, say, 32mpg (hwy) for sedans would be better, imo.
Posted by: Jeff Harbert | 16 November 2005 at 08:32 AM
How much fuel do these high mileage cars use per hour sitting in LA county's traffic jams?
Posted by: tom deplume | 16 November 2005 at 06:07 PM