SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Auto dealers say California’s proposed rules to require carmakers to build more electric and other less-polluting hybrid cars and trucks by 2025 will cost consumers more money and will stifle the industry’s growth.
Consumer groups say customers might pay more for the vehicles but will save in lower fuel and other costs.
Both sides submitted testimony today during a meeting of the state’s air quality board, which was poised to vote on rules to require that vehicles emit about 75 percent less smog-producing pollutants.
The new standards, which also include big cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, would begin with new cars sold in 2015, and get increasingly more stringent until 2025. The rules also mandate that one of every seven new cars sold in 2025 in the state be a zero-emission or plug-in hybrid vehicle.
California Air Resources Board Chairman Mary Nichols said she hopes the rules lead “the nation and the world.”
“We can’t afford to wait. We have to act on these issues now,” she said at the panel’s meeting. “Our projections show continued growth in population and vehicle miles traveled, which will affect air quality for years to come.”
Other states often adopt California’s smog emissions standards because they are stricter than federal ones. Fourteen states, including Washington, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts, have adopted the state’s current emissions goals, which is why the new regulations could have a wide-ranging effect.
Of those states, 10 also adopted the zero-emission vehicle standards. But the California New Car Dealers Association and other industry groups representing those who sell cars said the board is overestimating consumer demand for electric vehicles and other so-called “zero-emission vehicles.”
--Jack Z. Smith
