# California Creates Electric Car Loophole



## EVDL Archive (Jul 26, 2007)

Brad Berman reports on Plug In America's contention that CARB refuses to discuss the loophole in recent regulation that cuts the required number of electric cars in half.

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## DJBecker (Nov 3, 2010)

The title is misleading. It's not a loophole. It's just the usual exaggeration of the benefits. Automakers have a choice of selling more efficient cars, or selling a higher percentage of alternate fuel cars.

Emissions rules like this one have a long history of being ultimately counterproductive:

Three way catalytic converters are hugely beneficial for some engines, but requiring them for all cars killed lean burn and stratified charge engines.

Alcohol in gasoline doesn't significantly reduce emissions on cars with closed-loop mixture control. That's essentially all cars sold in the past two decades. It does reduce emissions on engines with carburetors, but the bulk of the effect is fuel dilution so that they run leaner. (This is easily reversed by adjusting the mixture screw so that they run well again.) Why is there the claim of reduced emissions? Because the formula for estimating emissions was established in the 1970s and it's politically infeasible to change it.

MTBE was the first alcohol used. Because it was promoted by "environmentalists", there was no objective study of the environmental impact of the requirement. Those who objected were ignored or accused of being paid by big oil. When MTBE turned out to be carcinogenic and persistent in water supplies, it took years to reverse the bad decision . Worse, the process for establishing such requirements was not fixed to prevent it from happening again.


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