About a month ago, a newsman of a civilian TV broadcasting station reported about a research and development of stationary fuel cell power plant by Tokyo power supply company. When a spokesman of power company added that they were going to use liquefied natural gas as fuel, a young reporter reacted instantly, by saying that it was not clean engine(he might have been influenced by the U.S. environmentalists whom you will see later in this article.)
The State of California asked world vehicle manufactures to develop zero-emission vehicles and made a regulation to start from 2003 to sell them at least 10 percent of vehicles sold by each manufacturer in state of California a year. The state of New York adapted almost the same regulation, and a few other states were investigating such a regulation. It became a common sense that a clean air vehicle is a zero-emission vehicle. The mass media called zero-emission vehicles as "true zero-emission"vehicle and other clean vehicles such as hybrid vehicles or liquefied natural gas engined vehicle as "not true"zero-emission vehicle. They rather played down the part of these vehicles in their clean air projects.
Needless to say, almost all of world auto manufacturers have been against the regulation because their plan was unrealistic. But some of them did not act positively to stop the regulation because they were politically pressured by Ballard Company in Canada, which was on the world top level in study of fuel cell batteries. There are many which are against the regulation like General Motors. Mr. Donn Walker, a spokesman of the company, said that "We are aggressively opposed to mandate in all forms. If there was a market for electric vehicles in California, (the board) wouldn't need a mandate (from Detroit News, Dec. 9, 2000.)
Toyota began to sell "Prius", a hybrid car, in U.S.A. They have reported the sale was going well along the original schedule up to now. But I don't think they got any positive reception from mass media. I think this is the result of the above mentoned effects.
The restrictions in California were reviewed every two year. The present restriction is not 10 percent of sales but four percent. The remaining six percent is for hybrid or liquefied natural gas engine vehicles from 2003. But a state agency of California in charge of clean air regulation proposed a compromise plan on December 8, 2000. It decreased the mandate four percent to two percent for zero-emission vehicle and the remaining eight percent for hybrid and other clean air vehicles. They are expecting the resolution of amended regulation at the state diet by the middle of January, next year.
The regulation, which vehicle users as well as manufacturers are against, would be resoluted along the draft. Or people might be able to get more from the government. We have to watch the move of both sides for a coming few weeks.
To supply the customers with a little high priced products which a few of them can be affordable will sell in a bigger quantity and contribute more effectively for protecting environment than to mandate the customers with high priced products which few consumers can purchase and also which is technically still imperfect. I think the answer is very clear.