CARB Hubris

In classical literature, a character that show the flaw of hubris, extreme arrogance, often winds up being toppled.

California's Air Resource Board (CARB) has been showing hubris for years, as they have been pushing a zero emissions vehicle mandate. They were chastened several times, when their mandates were simply impossible to achieve, and they had to back off on electric car requirements.

In a recent interview published in the Detroit News, ARB chairwoman Mary Nichols stated that

By 2016 or 2017 � when tough requirements kick in � Nichols said: "By then everyone will be buying them."

Everyone? Really?

To date, electric cars have not exactly caught on, even in California. The best selling all-electric car, the Nissan Leaf, only managed to sell about 6,000 units in California in 2012. That's out of a market of about 1.5 million new cars! But ARB expects that in just 3 or 4 model years (one design cycle!) electric cars will be a mainstream product in California.

How is this going to happen? Batteries might get a bit cheaper, but no one thinks that we are going to get close to gasoline parity by 2016, that I have heard of.

Until electric cars are close enough in convenience and purchase price to gasoline cars, or until gasoline becomes much more expensive, electric cars are not going to be a common purchase, and I expect that CARB is going to have to eat crow, again.