Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 3. Relation between technological advancement and environmental performance
it will also translate in the need to further curb
emissions in the transport sector.
In the US, California was a pioneer state in
introducing strict emission standards for road
vehicles. The 2004 ARB regulation aims at cutting
GHG emissions of car transport to 1990 levels
in 2020 (corresponding to a 30% cut relatively
to 2004 levels) and to reduce emissions to 80%
under 1990 levels by 2050.
As a matter of fact, the car industry needed
to take environmental issues into account. They
worked proactively on several environmental
improvements, including the increase of car ef-
ficiency. They realized that a more radical way to
decarbonise the car sector is to find a technological
solution that will provide the same service with
no direct emissions. As a result, the car industry
has looked for moving from internal combustion
engine (ICE) to low emitting technological solu-
tions. Several experimentations were tried, either
for hybrid or electric cars or also hydrogen.
Before the Toyota Prius model emerged, it
however always led to failure. For instance, in
the seventies, General Motors (GM) invested
huge amounts in hybrid cars without any concrete
results. In the eighties, GM made a new attempt
introducing an “EV1” model, but, again, it led to
failure in the nineties. A famous documentary,
“Who killed the electric car?” (2006) by Chris
Paine demonstrates that all stakeholders are re-
sponsible for this failure in the US: the car industry
US consumers, etc. It was just not the right time
for the electric vehicle: the technology was not
ready to be sold at a price that can be supported
by customers even if California's government
provided financial incentives for it. Above all, the
cost for GM to transform its own business model
around the EV and the need to find new outlets
for oil companies in case electric car would have
emerged discouraged GM which finally turned
into an opponent of the EV. Eventually, GM gave
up the EV1 model.
However, after the Rio de Janeiro Summit in
1992 and the Kyoto protocol (1997), stronger
environmental awareness spread among several
key actors of car industry. It triggered a new
cycle of R&D investments into electric car and
other technologies, and measures to mitigate CO
2
emissions; CO
2
has been the most popularized
issue but many other environmental problems
were also taken into account: noise, car passen-
gers safety, respect of street walkers and drivers,
traffic jam, etc.
Since the mid-nineties, given that CO
2
emis-
sions reduction has constituted an environmental
priority, car manufacturers started to consider
this issue not only as a constraint on financial
margin but also as an opportunity to capture new
markets. For the car manufacturers that have in-
tegrated environmental issues into their strategy,
technological choices and ambition to reduce
CO
2
emissions are closely linked as in Figure 3.
