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CARB's New Sticker Requirement for Cars Sold in CA

Sunday, June 29th 2008 @ 10:49 AM post viewed 1654 times

Under a California Air Resources Board regulation, New cars will now have a window sticker with emission ratings. The labels, displaying each model's smog and greenhouse gas pollutants, will be required in California beginning Jan. 1.

I have a little problem with this as outlined below. This is my letter to CARB.

Congratulations on this new regulation. I think it is certainly a step in the right direction. After reading the story in the LA Times, I had a question regarding this quote:

"The cleanest vehicles will get a 10, the dirtiest a 1.The Honda Civic hybrid, for example, will get a 9 for smog and a 10 for greenhouse gases".

It seems like this scale will not take into consideration ZEVs like EVs or hydrogen powered vehicles. This will certainly lead to misleading the public in believing that by driving a regular hybrid, they are doing their best to reduce greenhouse gases, which as we know is far from true.

I am not sure if this quote was an unofficial comment just given off the cuff as an example, or if CARB's new ratings are ignoring the future of pure EVs. Please be so kind as to respond so we can update our listeners on this.

Thank you,

Bo Bennett, Host
EVcast.com

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Comments

John Briggs
Free Access

JohnBriggs said on Sunday, June 29th 2008 @ 4:37 PM:

Bo,

The chart below shows the requirements for the different scores.

http://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/detailedchart.pdf

Note that a passenger car is listed as an LDV.

Basically, to get a score of 10, the vehicle has to be an EV or perhaps a hydrogen car. Something like a Prius might be a 9.5. So there is a big difference between 9.5 and 10 in terms of the pollution coming out of the tail pipe, but not much difference in the score. This might leave the wrong impression with the customer. Perhaps this scale is better suited to traditional ICE vehicles and comparing them.

Eventually we will have higher pollutioning EVs (from the electric power plant) like the RAV4 and lower polluting EVs like the Aptera. That would not be reflected in the pollution scores either, both would be 10.

Thanks

John C. Briggs

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Bo Bennett
Tuesday Host
Group Administrator

Bo said on Sunday, June 29th 2008 @ 4:41 PM:

Good find John. So perhaps the Honda Civic was just a bad example given and not accurate. I do agree that the scale still appears to be off with the actual effects on the environment, but at least there is room for an emmission free vehicle.

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John Briggs
Free Access

JohnBriggs said on Monday, June 30th 2008 @ 7:59 AM:

The listing that I always find funny is

PZEV

which is "partial zero emissions vehicle". This is the designation for my Prius and there is a PZEV stick on the vehicle.

Is "Partial-zero" an oxymoron? Isn't part of zero, still zero? It is not like "almost-zero" which might make some sense indicating closeness to zero. "Partial-zero" sounds like the emissions are a piece of zero, which should be still zero, Right?

There are still plenty of emissions coming out of the Prius.

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Guest

a guest said on Tuesday, August 4th 2009 @ 1:44 AM:

Yeah I guess the Honda civic is the cleanliest of all and I saw some of civic wallpapers which emphasizes the cleanliness of the Civic Hybrid.

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