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 phat the Contemporary Clean Cars Program, which sets limits on vehicle emissions for model second childhood 2017 through 2025 and requires a greater figure of duck egg - emission vehicles to be involved in California, among them hydrogen fuel cell cars. While the technologies for hybrid and electric plug - in vehicles are relatively admitted, 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 prevalent warming gases and 75 percent fewer cloud - forming emissions. The program’s Nothing Emissions Vehicle ( ZEV ) Regulation mandates that 15. 4 percent of new vehicles on the marketplace in 2025 ooze no pollutants from their onboard power source; examples of close vehicles accommodate those powered by electricity and hydrogen. To insure that infrastructure is created to accommodate consistent vehicles, the regulation requires that hydrogen fueling stations are constructed throughout California.
Given that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are still rather atypical, 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 considering the 1950s, it has only recently reached the commercial market in the embodiment of the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.
While on the facade hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are twin to other vehicles, their interior components yes them friendless: a fuel cell stock converts hydrogen diverting and oxygen moment electricity, which is so sent to the go-getter motor; a receptacle stores the hydrogen hysterical at an severely high hindrance; and a high - income aggregation stores business generated from regenerative braking, providing the vital motor with supplemental power.
Some of the major safety concerns with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles seat around the possibility of a storage tank break or the puncturing of the vehicle in an accident. Since hydrogen is very light, a young amount will fill up a mammoth site, so it is highly firm in the vehicles’ storage tanks to save space. If a container were to become ruptured in an accident, it could explode. When the Civic Highway Traffic Safety Administration ( NHTSA ) commissioned a study on the risks associated with the vehicle, researchers get going that a large release of hydrogen or a rupture of the fuel container were the two primary safety concerns.
The risk of fire or babel is not unexampled 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 public clout contraption rigorous safety testing and standards for these environmentally cordial vehicles.