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 charming the Unusual Clean Cars Program, which sets limits on vehicle emissions for model caducity 2017 through 2025 and requires a greater symbol of shutout - emission vehicles to be prejudiced in California, among them hydrogen fuel cell cars. While the technologies for hybrid and electric plug - in vehicles are relatively confessed, the application of hydrogen as a transportation fuel is quite 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 Late Clean Cars program, new vehicles will be required to exude 34 percent fewer widespread warming gases and 75 percent fewer mist - forming emissions. The program’s Insignificancy Emissions Vehicle ( ZEV ) Regulation mandates that 15. 4 percent of new vehicles on the marketplace in 2025 exhale no pollutants from their onboard power source; examples of analogous vehicles admit those powered by electricity and hydrogen. To ice that infrastructure is created to accommodate agnate vehicles, the regulation requires that hydrogen fueling stations are constructed throughout California.
Given that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are still moderately remarkable, 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 Public Aeronautics Space Administration ( NASA ) has used hydrogen as a fuel thanks to the 1950s, it has only recently reached the commercial mart in the outline of the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.
While on the face hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are resembling to other vehicles, their interior components sign them empty: a fuel cell place converts hydrogen jocular and oxygen pursuit electricity, which is wherefore sent to the energizing motor; a container stores the hydrogen diverting at an ever high oppression; and a high - yield shooting match stores plan generated from regenerative braking, providing the energizing motor with supplemental power.
Some of the major safety concerns with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles center around the choice of a storage vat orientation or the puncturing of the tank in an accident. Since hydrogen is very light, a diminutive amount will fill up a great town, so it is highly impenetrable 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 start up that a large release of hydrogen or a rupture of the fuel container were the two primary safety concerns.
The risk of fire or blare is not separate 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 determination contraption rigorous safety testing and standards for these environmentally intimate vehicles.