If you want to figure out what the cars of the future will look like go to California. Quite apart from the high percentage of high-earning future-gazers that live in the famed US state (Elon Musk, anyone?) California's legislators have for decades now been changing the face of motoring, most notably in the way that vehicle emissions are policed. Thanks to Los Angeles' propensity for developing choking clouds of low-level smog, the state's Air Resources Board (CARB) has been instrumental in forcing car makers to adopt such technologies as catalytic convertors, unleaded petrol and low-sulphur fuels. Now, under current chairwoman Mary Nichols, CARB wants not only to encourage the sale and use of emissions-free electric cars, but to mandate them as the only cars you can sell in California.
Nichols has pledged to introduce laws requiring that 22 per cent of all cars sold in the state of California must be pure-electric by 2025, and that a full 100 per cent will have to be battery powered by 2030. CARB further wants to eliminate the use of petrol and diesel cars on the state’s roads by 2050.
Currently California’s laws state that 2.7 per cent of car sales must be electric (or at least zero-emissions, leaving the way open for hydrogen cars to potentially prosper). Nichols proposals apparently have the full support of governor Jerry Brown.
Damp rock
What does legislation promulgated by a Pacific sunshine state mean for this of us living on a rainy, damp rock sticking out of the North Atlantic?
Lots, as it happens. Quite apart from the tendency of global fashions and whims to originate from California’s creative spaces, the global car industry follows CARB’s decisions fully and carefully – they must if they are to continue to sell their wares in such a lucrative marketplace. What goes for California, eventually, goes for the world, and the CARB proposals are way, way ahead of proposed European legislation on vehicle emissions. The EU goal for 2020 is merely to reduce average emissions to 95g/km, with a likely further reduction to 75g/km by 2025. Full zero emissions legislation has not yet even been spoken of in a European context.
Now that California is taking the fully-electric plunge though, the world’s car makers will have to follow suit, and that means so will we. Fifteen years and counting, folks.
