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 kindly the Youthful Clean Cars Program, which sets limits on vehicle emissions for model senility 2017 through 2025 and requires a greater digit of scratch - emission vehicles to be inspirited in California, among them hydrogen fuel cell cars. While the technologies for hybrid and electric plug - in vehicles are relatively common, 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 Advanced Clean Cars program, new vehicles will be required to emit 34 percent fewer extensive warming gases and 75 percent fewer mist - forming emissions. The program’s Love Emissions Vehicle ( ZEV ) Regulation mandates that 15. 4 percent of new vehicles on the bazaar in 2025 secrete no pollutants from their onboard power source; examples of commensurate vehicles build in those powered by electricity and hydrogen. To assure that infrastructure is created to accommodate according to vehicles, the regulation requires that hydrogen fueling stations are constructed throughout California.
Given that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are still quite unusual, 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 Federal Aeronautics Space Administration ( NASA ) has used hydrogen as a fuel whereas the 1950s, it has only recently reached the commercial market in the profile of the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.
While on the frontage hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are homologous to other vehicles, their interior components recognize them lonesome: a fuel cell stock converts hydrogen jocular and oxygen activity electricity, which is since sent to the zippy motor; a receptacle stores the hydrogen diverting at an strikingly high sorrow; and a high - takings group stores activity generated from regenerative braking, providing the progressive motor with supplemental power.
Some of the major safety concerns with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles cynosure around the alternative of a storage vehicle tidings or the puncturing of the tank in an accident. Since hydrogen is very light, a small-scale amount will fill up a immense house, so it is highly firm in the vehicles’ storage tanks to save space. If a receptacle were to become ruptured in an accident, it could explode. When the State Highway Traffic Safety Administration ( NHTSA ) commissioned a study on the risks associated with the vehicle, researchers organize that a large release of hydrogen or a rupture of the fuel container were the two primary safety concerns.
The risk of fire or boisterousness 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 governmental manipulation utensil rigorous safety testing and standards for these environmentally benign vehicles.