Clett -

the whole thing is driven by California's ZEV legislation, which has also been adopted by a number of other states.

Large volume manufacturers/importers (those that sell more than 60,000 PC, LDT and MDV vehicles per year in California alone) have to meet the following minimum ZEV requirements:

MY 2005-2008: 10% of new vehicles sales
MY 2009-2011: 11%
MY 2012-2014: 12%
MY 2015-2017: 14%
MY 2018 & later: 16%

Sales of LDT2 vehicles (vehicle weight in driving condition + 300lbs 3751...5750lbs) are included in the sales volume, as follows:

MY 2007: 17% of LDTs included in volume basis
MY 2008: 34%
MY 2009: 51%
MY 2010: 68%
MY 2011: 85%
MY 2012 and later: 100%

This phasing-in has given manufacturers a perverse incentive to make their vehicles heavier than they would need to be. Because higher weight is compensated with higher engine power, this leads directly to lower fuel economy and indirectly, to troops in the Middle East.

To make things even more opaque, the volume basis for any given model year is actually computed based on historical rather than current sales data. Bottom line: the ZEV mandate is substantial and will bite even harder in the years to come.

The ZEV mandate defines three standards:

Gold Standard (min. 2% of volume sales basis):
true BEVs and FCVs
Silver Standard (min. 2% of volume sales basis):
AT PZEVs (HEV, PHEV, CNG, H2ICE & SULEV)
Bronze Standard (max. 6% of volume sales basis):
PZEVs (ICE & SULEV for 15 years/150,000 miles etc.)

In other words, large volume manufacturers have to sell at least some BEVs and/or FCVs (at "reasonable" prices, btw) or face penalties.

Intermediate volume manufacturers/importers (volume sales basis 4,500-60,000 vehicles) may meet their entire ZEV mandate with PZEVs alone.

Small volume manufacturers (volume sales bases below 4500 vehicles) are not requiried to meet the ZEV mandate.

The Gold Standard minimum sales volume requirement can be met in two different ways:

(a) Credit System

To date, no single manufacturer has been able/willing to actually produce and sell significant numbers of BEVs or FCVs. To keep the ZEV mandate alive and kicking,CARB introduced five sub-categories of ZEVs based on all-electic range in the UDDS cycle:

NEV (neighborhood electric vehicle)
Type 0 (less than 50 miles)
Type 1 (50-99 miles)
Type 2 (100 miles or more BEV)
Type 3 (100 miles of more FCV)

Instead of just adding up unit volume, CARB as introduced multipliers to encourage compliance:

For MY 2007 (2009, 2012), these are the multipliers:
NEV 0.15 (0.15, 0.15)
Type0 1.5 (1, 1)
Type1 7 (2, 2)
Type2 10 (3, 3)
Type3 40 (4, 3)

In other words, every MY 2007 FCV actually sold in CA counts as 40 vehicles for the purpose of ZEV accounting. Starting with MY 2009, meeting the Gold Standard minimum will require substantially higher unit volumes of high-range all-electric vehicles.

(b) Alternative compliance option

Large volume manufacturers can also choose to meet the Gold Standard using a mixture of FCVs and AT-PZEVs. The minimum number of hydrogen FCV units (no multipliers) is given as:

MY 2001-2008: 250
MY 2009-2011: 2500
MY 2012-2014: 25000
MY 2015-2017: 50000

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Source: Siemens VDO publication J71001-A-A638-X-7600, "Worldwide Emissions Standards and Related Regulations", April 2005

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What all this means is that the natural gas and nuclear lobbies successfully introduced a severe bias in favor of hydrogen FCVs into the revision of the ZEV mandate.

Hybrids featuring ultracaps, hydraulic accumulators or similar would permit much reduced ICE displacements and save a lot of fuel, but they cannot deliver high all-electric range so the credit system does not reward their development. Also, through MY 2008, BEV credits are well below those for FCVs.

The alternative compliance option is wholly biased against BEVs as well as fuel cell systems based on methanol or other hydrocarbons.

The whole ZEV mandate is a case study in how NOT to write legislation. Legislation is supposed to focus exclusively on desirable outcomes, in this case balancing health-related emissions targets, global warming mitigation objectives and economic growth, rathe than pick any specific technology. The fact that they do merely documents how the campaign contributions racket has corrupted the democratic process.

The people best placed to figure out how to meet outcomes society wants to see are engineers and entrepreneurs, not bureaucrats nor politicians.

I meant no sense emerges!

Clett, 5-10 vehicles/day is not a general limit of H2 pumps. They're just sizing to the current market.

Rafeal, ZEV Type 3 is not restricted to FCVs. It has a 100 mile range/10 minute refill requirement commonly thought to exclude BEVs. But Phoenix Motorcars is qualifying their AltairNano-based BEV for ZEV Type 3. It's a niftly little trick -- ZEV Type 3 credits are expected to be worth $200k. That only offsets a part of an FCV's cost, but a credit that large makes a $100k BEV a highly profitable product instead of an impractical curiousity.

Clett -

no, I'm saying the ZEV mandate as it stands today is intended to create a market for hydrogen by government fiat, regardless of what common sense would suggest. BEVs would also meet the zero tailpipe emissions objective but the natural gas and nuclear lobbies stand to make a lot more money off the wasteful process of producing hydrogen.

Back when the ZEV legislation was updated, GM had just crushed the fleet of EV-1s it had leased and recalled. BEVs appeared to be an impossible holy grail while FCVs appeared to be just the lifeline CARB was looking for to avoid the humiliation of having to give up on its ZEV dreams altogether. Now that CA has got religion wrt CO2 in addition to its clean air zealotry, the ZEV mandate's skewed focus has arguably become counter-productive.

It's actually richly ironic that in spite of all the public money that has been spent on FCVs, private investments in BEV technology are now likely to prove much the better bet after all. The one sliver lining is that from MY 2009 onwards, the credits awarded to BEVs and FCVs will be similar.

Cervus:

In Environment Protection simple legislation of desired results does not work. Industry just say that the goal is impossible to achieve, do nothing to develop appropriate technologies, and at the end claim that they were right – it was impossible.

As a result, both EPA and CARB are basing their work on legislation of “best available technology”. It is the only approach which proved to be effective.

Mechanics is very simple. They identify best technology which could solve the problem (mostly relying on university science), and legislate it implementation in near future. Naturally, industry outcry that it is technically, physiologically, and economically impossible. EPA and CARB say that they do not give a rat how industry will iron out technical problems, force customers to accept it, and make it economical. If industry fail to implement it, they will be heavily taxed and money will go to anybody who will be capable to solve the problem. So far, there always have been “traitors” inside the industry who somehow managed to achieve the goal in anticipation of fat profits. For example, Japanese automotive manufacturers were this Trojan Horse when CARB legislated three-way cats, engine computer control, and on-board diagnostic (OBD).
About the same happened with diesel emissions, which were widely claimed as impossible to curb.

Same is happening with ZEV mandate. CARB identified available technologies, like FC and BEV, and legislated their implementation. If particular car manufacturer is incapable to achieve it, they will pay hefty price for ZEV credits to whoever could provide ZEV vehicles, like Phoenix and Tesla is anticipated to profit from.

Now, the real life is way more complicated then this simplistic approach. Mandates should be fine tuned all the way to implementation. Hence the piecemeal of bins, tiers, schedules, exemptions, etc. ZEV mandate proved to be very tough nut to crack, hence addition of partial credits for SULEVs, HEVs, alternative fuel vehicles, PHEVs, etc. If someone will invent solar powered hovercraft, you can be sure it will get ZEV credits too. Nevertheless, the core requirement for some quantity of zero pipe emission vehicles remains intact, and this is sole guarantee of ongoing multy billion dollar investments in technologies which could in some future be THE SOLUTION.

Naturally, proved efficiency of CARB and EPA in solving environmental problems is disliked by many. Lazy industry executives, ineffective government bureaucrats who prefer to parasite on the problem rather then solve it, political and ideological groups who use environmental problems to move their agenda, or just people who are looking for somebody to hate.

"The whole ZEV mandate is a case study in how NOT to write legislation.... The people best placed to figure out how to meet outcomes society wants to see are engineers and entrepreneurs, not bureaucrats nor politicians."

Very good Rafael. All these complex laws and regulations only help bureaucrats and government growth.

A simple way to increase fuel efficiency is to eliminate all taxes on HEV's, PHEV's, BEV's and any other vehicle that gets 40+ mpg for all producers, consumers, and distributors. Free the people and free the market.

The flaw in cafe was by doing it the way it did it was SLOW and had to be slow.

Iys like having a race combining hotrods trucks and go garts and trying to come up with a good sopeed to set everything to.

Now if they had segmented it they could have set the speeds xseprately and thuis kept the push on ALL the segments to a greater degree then with the fleet wide seyup. In short they would have done more.

Rick:

It is old discussion what is better: government regulation or free market. My position is quite simple. Market is way better. Experienced it on my own hide.

Unfortunately, in some cases market does not work. In this case there is no choice but government regulation, however inherently ineffective it is. Environment protection is one of such cases, at least today. Energy and fuel efficiency is much more complicated case. Find right mix of free market and governmental regulation and incentives is not trivial task.

Well if the tank is chopped in half your dead already;/