CALIFORNIA FORCING ELECTRIC CAR SALES

Government mandates for sales of vehicles powered by electricity have problems on two levels. One is scientific, the other political.

California has such a mandate. In 1990, the state's Air Resources Board enacted a requirement that, starting in 1998, 2% of new cars sold be so called zero emission vehicles, meaning electric. The mandated share rises to 10% in 2003. Several states in the U.S. Northeast propose to make similar mandates part of their state implementation plans for compliance with the Clean Air Act. The federal Environmental Protection Agency plans to rule on those proposals by yearend.

SCIENTIFIC PROBLEMS

There's nothing wrong with developing electric cars. Automakers have been at it for years now. And the oil and gas industry has no reason to construe electric vehicles as a threat to gasoline markets. Under no reasonable scenario, even those that include state mandates for sales of the devices, do electric cars significantly erode consumption of traditional vehicle fuels. Indeed, the extra power needed for whatever market develops must come from plants whose fuels include oil and, increasingly, natural gas.

But that aspect of electricity that it is a secondary energy source is one of the scientific problems associated with the march toward electric vehicles. Popular as opposed to commercial support for electric vehicles derives to some extent from the quaint notion that electricity comes from outlets in the walls of buildings. The fact is that incremental gains in power generation necessitated by electric cars will come largely from increased burning of coal and natural gas. It is for that reason that a controversial draft report leaked from the EPA in January challenged the environmental assumptions about electric vehicles. When power plant activities are taken into account, these cars are not zero emission contraptions at all.

To some degree, then, electric cars have been oversold as solutions to air pollution problems. And the vehicles' mechanical disadvantages battery weight, range limitations, and so forth persist. Taken together, the scientific drawbacks translate into serious economic disadvantages. Vehicles exist to move people and objects from place to place. Vehicles powered by liquid hydrocarbons still accomplish those tasks better, in terms of cost and convenience, than those powered by anything else at hand. Others may have advantages in niche markets. That's well and good. But traditionally powered vehicles will remain the rational choice for general transportation for many years. They also pollute less all the time.

THE POLITICAL PROBLEM

The political problem of electric vehicles is the mandate itself. California has decreed that a certain percentage of new car sales by a certain date be of a certain variety. How is this to be accomplished? What if nobody wants to buy electric cars? Automakers will have to sell electric cars below cost and make up the difference by raising prices of gasoline and diesel burners. Some number of Hollywood celebrities turned environmental activists will pony up for battery buggies, of course. But two certain outcomes will be plummeting auto sales in California with a compensating surge in business at car dealerships in neighboring states. California's economy, already reeling from heavyweight regulation, will suffer even more.

Coercion of the type enacted in California and proposed elsewhere comes close to despotism. In the U.S., government officials do not tell individuals what products to buy. The scientific problems of electric vehicles will manifest themselves economically in ways that eventually will turn political. Angry consumers will become angry voters. The sooner it happens, the better.