How A California Law Changed EV Technology Forever

One of the biggest current toll processing market sectors is in the field of battery production, with dedicated specialist machines helping to create the huge numbers of high-capacity lithium-ion batteries needed to meet the demand for electric vehicles over the next ten years.

The first commercial lithium-ion battery would be patented in 1987, but three years later, a largely unrelated environmental mandate would change and transform the electric car industry, although it would take much longer for it to change in a positive way.

The California Air Resources Board launched their Zero-Emission Vehicle programme (ZEV) in 1990, with a mandate that required a certain number of vehicles made by manufacturers to be ZEVs, which at this point typically meant making electric cars.

Specifically, this required the big seven manufacturers to ensure that two per cent of their entire manufactured fleet were ZEVs by 1998, five per cent by 2001 and 10 per cent by 2003, in order to sell cars in California, a major market for many of these companies.

These manufacturers, which included General Motors, Chrysler, Ford, Honda, Nissan, Toyota and Chevrolet, responded both by developing prototype EVs and by protesting the new rules, arguing that electric battery technology available at the time made the rules almost impossible to meet.

They wanted the entire mandate pushed back to 2003, when they argued that electric battery technology would be mature enough to make the cars viable to drive, with GM, in particular, being adamant about this, aiming to close production as soon as it could on its EV1 model.

Ironically, the CARB was inspired to set up the ZEV programme in the first place thanks to the successful showcase of GM’s Impact electric car prototype.

Eventually, the manufacturers would get their way, and most of the early EV models would have their leases terminated early and be demolished, with only a few Chevrolet S-10 pick-up tricks sold to fleet customers and the Toyota RAV4 EV remaining after protests from leaseholders.

GM’s next major car after recalling all of their EV1 models was the infamous Hummer H2, which led to a controversy that endured until the success of the Chevrolet Volt in 2011.