Detroit Killed the Electric Car, and Washington Killed The PZEV

From here:

On a recent run from Boston to Cape Cod, I test drove the 2008 Honda Accord, the latest version of this family favorite. The new Accord boasts an environmental first: a six-cylinder gasoline engine that’s cleaner than many hybrid systems.

There’s only one catch: You can’t actually buy this ultra-green Accord, or the four-cylinder version that also produces near-zero pollution. That is, unless you live in California, New York or six other northeast states that follow California’s tougher pollution rules. Only there can you buy this Accord, or the roughly two dozen other models that meet so-called Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle standards, PZEV for short.

Not only can’t you buy one, but the government says it’s currently illegal for automakers to sell these green cars outside of the special states. Under terms of the Clean Air Act—in the kind of delicious irony only our government can pull off—anyone (dealer, consumer, automaker) involved in an out-of-bounds PZEV sale 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.

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. Grill a single juicy burger, and you’ve cooked up the same hydrocarbon emissions as a three-hour drive in a Ford Focus PZEV. As the California Air Resources Board has noted, the tailpipe emissions of these cars can be cleaner than the outside air in smoggy cities.

Absolutely astonishing. It’s just one of those things that boggles the mind. Why in the hell are the environmental “powers that be” focusing on mind-blowingly useless wastes of time like Live-Earth when instead they could be using some of their resources to force the government to allow the sale of PZEV vehicles in every state in the union? Why in the hell the government has it’s hands in something like this, is astonishing… makes me swing towards a libertarian position… (sorry Che). I am not saying we should legislatively demand that every car sold in the US be a PZEV, let the free market decide! But shit, at least allow the american consumer to choose to buy a more environmentally conscious vehicle, even if it doesn’t save them money on gas mileage or get them a hybrid tax-cut. It’s this sentiment that really pisses me off:

The PZEV cars don’t get any better mileage than conventional versions. Would most self-interested Americans even pay a lousy 100 bucks for cleaner air that doesn’t put fuel savings back in their pocket? “With hybrids, the selling point is fuel economy, so there’s a dollar amount on that,” said William Walton, Honda’s product planning chief for U.S. cars. “We want to give people the cleanest vehicles we can produce, but how much are people willing to pay for clean air?”

Golly, maybe I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that people purchased hybrid vehicles not only because the selling point is fuel economy, not only because it gives people a tax cut, but because we wanted to do our little tiny bit towards guaranteeing that future generations could enjoy a snowfall, or a drink of fresh water. You have to wonder, with our splendid representative republic, whose constituents exactly are being represented with this brilliant little piece of legislation.