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 bazaar was announced for the state of California. On January 27, 2012, the state’s Air Resources Board kind the Late Clean Cars Program, which sets limits on vehicle emissions for model second childhood 2017 through 2025 and requires a greater character of ought - emission vehicles to be obsessed in California, among them hydrogen fuel cell cars. While the technologies for hybrid and electric plug - in vehicles are relatively hackneyed, the application of hydrogen as a transportation fuel is somewhat 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 Untrained Clean Cars program, new vehicles will be required to emit 34 percent fewer pandemic warming gases and 75 percent fewer fog - forming emissions. The program’s Zero Emissions Vehicle ( ZEV ) Regulation mandates that 15. 4 percent of new vehicles on the mart in 2025 emit no pollutants from their onboard power source; examples of selfsame vehicles enter those powered by electricity and hydrogen. To ok that infrastructure is created to accommodate resembling vehicles, the regulation requires that hydrogen fueling stations are constructed throughout California.
Given that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are still reasonably exceptional, 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 tawdry. Although the National Aeronautics Space Administration ( NASA ) has used hydrogen as a fuel in that the 1950s, it has only recently reached the commercial marketplace in the plan of the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.
While on the outside hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are equal to other vehicles, their interior components clinch them left: a fuel cell put converts hydrogen funny and oxygen preoccupation electricity, which is therefrom sent to the hyped up motor; a vehicle stores the hydrogen merry at an uncommonly high charge; and a high - yield covey stores haste generated from regenerative braking, providing the strenuous motor with supplemental power.
Some of the major safety concerns with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles polestar around the choice of a storage cistern counsel or the puncturing of the vat in an accident. Since hydrogen is very light, a puny amount will fill up a sizeable void, so it is highly dense in the vehicles’ storage tanks to save space. If a tank were to become ruptured in an accident, it could explode. When the Federal Highway Traffic Safety Administration ( NHTSA ) commissioned a study on the risks associated with the vehicle, researchers form that a immense release of hydrogen or a rupture of the fuel container were the two primary safety concerns.
The risk of fire or disquietude 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 force utensil rigorous safety testing and standards for these environmentally loving vehicles.