Green Cars You Can't Buy

Geoffrey.landis writes "Auto industry blogger Lawrence Ulrich notes that Honda is now making a "Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle" (or PZEV for short) version of the 2008 Accord, an all-new vehicle that is redesigned to meet California emission standards. He notes "So, just how green is a PZEV machine? Well, if you just cut your lawn with a gas mower, congratulations, you just put out more pollution in one hour than these cars do in 2,000 miles of driving." But the irony is that it's actually illegal for automakers to sell these green cars outside of the special states they were designed for! Apparently, anybody selling one of these ultra-green vehicles out of the correctly-designated venue — which means either California, or seven northeast-states with similar pollution laws — "could be subject to civil fines of up to $27,500. Volvo sent its dealers a memo alerting them to this fact, noting that its greenest S40 and V50 models were only for the special states.""

Comments

very simple reason for it

[netsavior]

California gives automakers huge grants for making CA only cars. The cars are subsidized by the state, so if you sell it in another state you are basically taking tax dollars away from California residents (both in the Car's sale, and in the state's funding of the car manufacturing/R&D).

I am not saying it's right, but it is not 100% rediculious.

Re:Partially Zero?

[ePhil_One]

I suspect its invented Marketing for the next step beyond "Ultra Low Emmissions". Maybe emissions are below the point of measurement?

But the article is lame because it doesn't give any of the reasons why these cars may be illegal outside these few states; my understanding is that Californian laws are be definition stricter than US EPA regulations because no matter what, the US EPA regs apply too. Most makers gave up building a special "California Car" ages ago and just make 1 clean model to keep mass market efficiencies. It does hint that these cars cost a premium that is being absorbed by the makers, which is why they might want to restrict sales, but thast not the claim of the article. Keep in mind PZEV has nothing to do w/ economy or CO2, it has to do with byproducts like CO & NO2.

But waitaminute...

[maillemaker]

Look, if Californians want to state-subsidize cleaner automobiles, that's fine.

But how does letting other people buy the same kind of car in other states hurt their investment? The people of California would /still/ get to buy cleaner cars. And in fact, if other people could buy them, too, maybe the price would go down and California would not have to subsidize them so heavily.

Now I could see California saying they will only pay a subsidy for cars sold IN California, which would mean they would cost more in other states that don't subsidize. But I don't see why they would care.