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 hunky-dory the Ultramodern Clean Cars Program, which sets limits on vehicle emissions for model dotage 2017 through 2025 and requires a greater symbol of nada - emission vehicles to be affected in California, among them hydrogen fuel cell cars. While the technologies for hybrid and electric plug - in vehicles are relatively familiar, 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 Just out Clean Cars program, new vehicles will be required to emit 34 percent fewer rampant warming gases and 75 percent fewer fog - forming emissions. The program’s Nadir 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 allying vehicles enter those powered by electricity and hydrogen. To clinch that infrastructure is created to accommodate uniform vehicles, the regulation requires that hydrogen fueling stations are constructed throughout California.
Given that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are still rather 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 Civic Aeronautics Space Administration ( NASA ) has used hydrogen as a fuel for the 1950s, it has only recently reached the commercial bazaar in the pattern of the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.
While on the appearance hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are not unlike to other vehicles, their interior components side with them empty: a fuel cell put up converts hydrogen hilarious and oxygen interest electricity, which is wherefore sent to the go-getter motor; a vat stores the hydrogen ludicrous at an inordinately high foreboding; and a high - crop batch stores deal generated from regenerative braking, providing the vital motor with supplemental power.
Some of the major safety concerns with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles hub around the possibility of a storage cistern data or the puncturing of the cistern in an accident. Since hydrogen is very light, a insufficient amount will fill up a mammoth venue, so it is highly inflexible in the vehicles’ storage tanks to save space. If a tank 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 establish that a substantial release of hydrogen or a rupture of the fuel container were the two primary safety concerns.
The risk of fire or babble is not single 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 national oversight instrument rigorous safety testing and standards for these environmentally solicitous vehicles.