“Today’s vote . . . represents a new chapter for clean cars in California and in the nation as a whole,’’ said Mary Nichols, the board’s chairman. “Californians have always loved their cars. We buy a lot of them and drive them. Now we will have cleaner and more efficient cars to love.’’
California’s auto emissions standards are influential and often stricter than federal rules. The state began passing regulations for cleaner cars in the 1960s to help ease some of the world’s worst smog, and has since helped spur the auto industry’s innovations in emissions-control technology.
Fourteen other states - including Massachusetts, New York, and Washington - have adopted California’s smog emissions rules as their own.
California also set zero-emissions vehicle mandates, which 10 other states have adopted.
Companies including Ford Motor Corp., Chrysler Group LLC, General Motors Co., Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., and others submitted testimony Thursday supportive of the new standards.
Some of the companies protested the inclusion of a system that will give some automakers credit toward their zero-emission vehicle mandate for exceeding federal greenhouse gas emissions standards in other cars. These credits, which can be used to reduce the number of clean vehicles made, can be used from 2018-2021.
Some called it a loophole that will take hundreds of thousands of clean cars off the road, hurting the emerging market for these vehicles. “This is a temporary way station,’’ Nichols said about the credits. “But by 2021 all companies will be producing the full complement of zero-emission vehicles.’’
Trade groups representing auto dealers worried that the regulations would increase the costs of vehicles for consumers and stifle the industry’s growth.
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.’’
