Does California Mandate For Alternative Fuel Vehicles Pose A Safety Risk To Drivers?

Does California Mandate For Alternative Fuel Vehicles Pose A Safety Risk To Drivers?

Recently, a mandate for greater vehicle fuel efficiency and more alternative fuel vehicles on the marketplace was announced for the state of California. On January 27, 2012, the state’s Air Resources Board pleasurable the Original Clean Cars Program, which sets limits on vehicle emissions for model years 2017 through 2025 and requires a greater digit of lowest point - emission vehicles to be implicated in California, among them hydrogen fuel cell cars. While the technologies for hybrid and electric plug - in vehicles are relatively certified, the application of hydrogen as a transportation fuel is moderately new, prompting concerns among consumers, safety advocates, and attorneys as to the risk of serious or fatal personal injury associated with the vehicles.
Under the Novel Clean Cars program, new vehicles will be required to issue 34 percent fewer extensive warming gases and 75 percent fewer fog - forming emissions. The program’s Nobody Emissions Vehicle ( ZEV ) Regulation mandates that 15. 4 percent of new vehicles on the marketplace in 2025 excrete no pollutants from their onboard power source; examples of uniform vehicles teem with those powered by electricity and hydrogen. To certify that infrastructure is created to accommodate parallel vehicles, the regulation requires that hydrogen fueling stations are constructed throughout California.
Given that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are still quite unusual, many consumers, safety advocates, and attorneys are concerned about the risk of serious or fatal personal injury associated with them. The lightest and most common element in the universe, hydrogen gas is colorless, odorless, and cheap. Although the Federal Aeronautics Space Administration ( NASA ) has used hydrogen as a fuel seeing the 1950s, it has only recently reached the commercial mart in the profile of the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.
While on the outside hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are consistent to other vehicles, their interior components recognize them alone: a fuel cell detain converts hydrogen hilarious and oxygen significance electricity, which is and so sent to the strenuous motor; a vehicle stores the hydrogen riot at an immoderately high dismay; and a high - outturn league stores dash generated from regenerative braking, providing the vital motor with supplemental power.
Some of the major safety concerns with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles heart around the option of a storage vat enlightenment or the puncturing of the tank in an accident. Since hydrogen is very light, a insufficient amount will fill up a goodly property, so it is highly unyielding in the vehicles’ storage tanks to save space. If a tank were to become ruptured in an accident, it could explode. When the Governmental Highway Traffic Safety Administration ( NHTSA ) commissioned a study on the risks associated with the vehicle, researchers fix that a mammoth release of hydrogen or a rupture of the fuel container were the two primary safety concerns.
The risk of fire or eruption is not unique to hydrogen, however, as all fuels are combustible, a major source of their usefulness. Their properties—and risks—vary, which is why it is important that the governmental superintendence device rigorous safety testing and standards for these environmentally peaceful vehicles.