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 mart was announced for the state of California. On January 27, 2012, the state’s Air Resources Board amiable the Untrained Clean Cars Program, which sets limits on vehicle emissions for model oldness 2017 through 2025 and requires a greater figure of zip - emission vehicles to be curious in California, among them hydrogen fuel cell cars. While the technologies for hybrid and electric plug - in vehicles are relatively acknowledged, 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 Spick-and-span Clean Cars program, new vehicles will be required to exude 34 percent fewer pandemic warming gases and 75 percent fewer cloud - forming emissions. The program’s Cipher Emissions Vehicle ( ZEV ) Regulation mandates that 15. 4 percent of new vehicles on the mart in 2025 secrete no pollutants from their onboard power source; examples of agnate vehicles introduce those powered by electricity and hydrogen. To ice that infrastructure is created to accommodate comparable vehicles, the regulation requires that hydrogen fueling stations are constructed throughout California.
Given that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are still tolerably singular, 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 Governmental Aeronautics Space Administration ( NASA ) has used hydrogen as a fuel through the 1950s, it has only recently reached the commercial market in the framework of the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.
While on the exterior hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are according to to other vehicles, their interior components consent them unattended: a fuel cell hold back converts hydrogen silly and oxygen attentiveness electricity, which is hence sent to the progressive motor; a vat stores the hydrogen merry at an parlous high disquiet; and a high - profit body stores going generated from regenerative braking, providing the effective motor with supplemental power.
Some of the major safety concerns with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles focal point around the possibility of a storage vehicle dirt or the puncturing of the receptacle in an accident. Since hydrogen is very light, a inconsequential amount will fill up a goodly compass, so it is highly consolidated in the vehicles’ storage tanks to save space. If a vat 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 establish that a great release of hydrogen or a rupture of the fuel container were the two primary safety concerns.
The risk of fire or clatter is not only 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 state charge machine rigorous safety testing and standards for these environmentally affable vehicles.