Gas Pumps in the Rearview?
SACRAMENTO — Here is how I remember it. We were driving on California 152, over by Los Banos. This was about 30 years ago, and the family car was a big Mercury Monterey sedan. The distinguishing feature of this model was its back window, which slanted down and in at a sharp angle. The design’s intent, I suppose, was to give the car a futuristic look, like something the Jetsons might drive.
Anyway, on this summer day we happened to pass a strange little box of a car--a Honda, I now believe. This was the first Japanese import we’d ever seen, and the image of the tiny machine bucking an afternoon breeze, its passengers squeezed inside, shoulder to shoulder, head to roof, seemed absolutely ludicrous. We all giggled, and I seem to remember my mother saying something as we boomed past. What I seem to remember her saying was this:
“Toot, toot.”
*
Well, how could we know any better? How could we know that the next wave in automobiles would be, not big Mercs with slant-back windows, but little Japanese imports? The future can be difficult to see, especially when it’s in your rearview mirror. I face a similar quandary today, trying to imagine a time when electric cars dominate the roadways. Advocates insist this not only is inevitable, but could be only a decade or so away. Still, the idea of recharging some clean, quiet electro-wagon each night in the clutter of my garage seems faraway, fantastic.
In this failure of imagination I suspect I am not alone. And in this failure of imagination Detroit auto makers and their allies in internal combustion find opportunity. As evidence, I offer a well-attended hearing Monday at the Capitol.
An Assembly committee was taking testimony on regulations that will mandate 2% of all new cars sold in California by 1998 emit zero pollutants. Under these mandates, drafted to help California comply with federal clean air requirements, 10% of the vehicles sold by 2003 must be so-called Zero Emission Vehicles, or ZEVS. Present technology pretty much dictates that the ZEVS will be electric cars. U.S. auto makers have been lobbying quietly against the coming mandates. The hearing forced them and their allies--mainly, representatives of the oil industry--to go public.
In testimony, at news conferences and in encounters in the Capitol halls, they attacked the mandates from many angles--bad science, bad public policy, bad economics, unfair, unfeasible, unnecessary, un-American. They invoked Adam Smith and the Edsel. They warned of taxpayer boondoggles, excessive regulation, higher electric bills and even job flight. The overarching intent seemed to be to plant one seed: The risk of enforcing the mandate schedule outweighs any benefit that will come from forcing along electric cars.
Though they pay homage to the quest for “exciting new technology,” when it comes to electric cars, these people clearly are skeptics. The technology isn’t there, they say, and neither is the market. Trust your instincts, they imply, it’s not going to happen. After testimony from one electric car enthusiast, a representative of the Western States Petroleum Assn. gave me a grin and a knowing look and said: “Pretty wild stuff.” He might have just said: Toot, toot.
*
Electric car advocates--and the most significant development Monday was the Wilson Administration’s reassertion of support for ZEV mandates--compare the auto makers’ stance to those initially taken against air bags. Detroit, they say, simply wants to do business its way, on its timetable. And here is where the electric car people sense an opportunity of their own.
“Not all these cars have to be built in Detroit,” said Michael Gage, the former politico who now serves as president of Calstart, a quasi-public consortium attempting to foster transportation innovations. If Detroit doesn’t want to build them, he said, others surely will--in Germany, or Japan, or maybe in Burbank, where his group is headquartered in a retired aircraft plant. A principal benefit of the mandates, he and others testified, will be to jump-start technology and create an entire new industry--and jobs.
During his testimony, Gage presented slides of electric car prototypes under development around the world. The models ranged from Mercedes trucks to tiny, square Japanese contraptions that reminded me of that early Honda: Cars, quipped one Assembly member, “that fit in your pocket.”
The most important slide Gage brought, however, was a shot of the Los Angeles skyline choked with smog. “This is what it’s all about,” he said. And he was right. The future might be tough to see, but the present is obvious. Just look out the window, and ask what is the greater risk: Trying something that might not work, or not trying at all?
