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 The heads of two major lobby groups told hundreds of attendees at an
industry conference in Traverse City, Michigan, that automakers are
struggling to meet a California mandate to boost demand for electric
cars to 15 percent of sales by 2025.
Nine other states have adopted the same target to comply with the
Obama administration's efforts to curb greenhouse gas omissions from
vehicles.
The rules should be made tougher, insisted Diarmuid O'Connell, vice
president of business development at Tesla Motors Inc , the Silicon
Valley electric carmaker which profits from selling clean air
credits generated by its Model S sedans.
In the unusually open discussion, O'Connell said consumer demand for
electric cars could be higher, but too many models from established
car companies "are appliances in terms of the concept and the way
that they look."
A top official of California's clean air regulatory agency said
state officials will stand firm, and got support from the head of
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Transportation
and Air Quality.
"I am a big believer in the idea of California as an incubator for
technology," said Christopher Grundler of the EPA.
Under the federal rules, automakers and regulators are supposed to
conduct a review of U.S. fuel economy standards that call for new
vehicles to average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.
California and nine other states, however, have taken the additional
step of setting quotas for sales of "zero emission vehicles," either
battery electric or fuel-cell models, which account for less than 1
percent of U.S. car and light truck sales today.
The recent boom in sales of sport-utility vehicles and light trucks,
fueled by cheap gasoline, has exacerbated industry concerns about
the electric vehicle mandates, said Mitch Bainwol, president of the
Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which represents the Detroit
Three and several other large Asian and European automakers.
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"The product mix is drifting away" from the targets of the federal
greenhouse gas emissions rules and the California electric vehicle
targets, Bainwol said.
Forrest McConnell, former chairman of the National Automobile
Dealers Association, told attendees the mandates were comparable to
offering broccoli to consumers who wanted low-calorie doughnuts.
But mainstream auto industry officials were unclear about how they
would alter the California and federal regulatory systems.
John Bozzella, head of Global Automakers, a trade group that
represents mostly non-U.S. automakers, suggested the answer could be
an entirely new approach that gives automakers incentives to adopt
advanced safety and connected vehicle technology, which allows cars
to communicate with each other and help cut down greenhouse gas
emissions, perhaps by reducing fuel burn sitting in traffic jams.
But the EPA's Grundler was skeptical. "We believe automakers will
have a formidable task" to show that connected vehicle technologies
will produce greenhouse gas benefits, he said.
(Reporting by Joseph White; Editing by Richard Chang)
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