ZEV Press Conference, Los Angeles, March 9, 2003 Remarks by AC Propulsion President, Tom Gage Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Since 1992, AC Propulsion has been building electric cars that people want to drive. We build them one-at-a-time now, we want to build them by the hundreds or even thousands. We build the tzero. It’s an electric sports car that out-accelerates a Lamborghini but is more efficient than a Honda Insight. Today, I drove down in my Plug Bug, a New Beetle we’ve converted to electric power. Since time is limited I will speak bluntly. Electric vehicles are needed now more than ever. We need them for their emissions benefits. More urgently, we need them for their energy benefits. The US uses 45% of the world’s gasoline for 5% of the world’s people. That imbalance is not sustainable. We need to conserve gasoline and we need to substitute other energy sources for it. Starting now. EVs use energy efficiently and they use non-petroleum energy from clean, secure, and renewable resources. EVs should be a major element of US and California transportation energy policy. Commendably, CARB set the ball rolling with the ZEV mandate in 1990. Now, unaccountably, they want to stop and even roll back all the progress made in developing an EV market. Governor Davis’ famous words about the mandate live on in the latest CARB proposal. Nada, zip, zero he said about emissions back then. Now, that’s how many EVs we’ll have under the new regulations. It’s a Z-ZEV mandate – zero zero emission vehicles. How did this happen? CARB got tangled up in its own rules and the car companies out-smarted them. CARB should admit this. Instead, in face-saving double talk, CARB is spouting the automakers’ self-serving findings to justify abandoning electric vehicles. You don’t have to be an engineer to see through their tortured logic. They say EVs are too expensive. Their solution? Fuel cell cars. They cost a million dollars today. In 20 years they’ll be under $100,000. They say EVs don’t have enough range. Their solution? Fuel cell cars again, even though fuel cell cars struggle even to match the range of a good EV. And EVs run on electricity, you can plug in everywhere. Fuel cell cars run on hydrogen. You can’t get it anywhere. They say battery technology is stagnant. Have they used a laptop recently? In the past 5 years lithium-ion cells for laptops have dramatically increased in capacity and dropped in price. If you put enough laptop batteries in an EV, it could go 200 miles, accelerate like a sports car and cost less than an SUV. I understand why the automakers say these things, they want to kill the mandate. But CARB should not endorse these myths. The market, not panels of experts, determines who pays what for how much. CARB needs to disengage from their adversarial stalemate with the car companies. They need a new approach to getting EVs on the road. In that spirit, I offer these five recommendations to the 11 members of the Air Resources Board who will consider this matter on March 27. First of all do not approve staff’s March 5 proposed modifications. It is not in California’s best interest. Second, accept the fact that you cannot force the car companies to build EVs. You lost that battle but do not concede the war because of it. Keep pushing for EVs. California needs them. Third, you have a mandate, keep it, strengthen it, and enforce it. The mandate is a credit mandate. Car companies can produce EVs or they must buy credits from those who do. Let the car companies off the hook on production, but make sure they have to purchase all credits from any company that builds and sells safety-certified electric vehicles. Fourth, join forces with other state bodies including the California Energy Commission, the Public Utilities Commission, and the legislature. This is about energy as well as air quality. Restore, strengthen, and unify California’s commitment to pioneer the transformation to electric transportation. Fifth, remember that car buyers are the real agents for change in vehicle technology. What people buy determines what automakers build. It is time for CARB to work with EV buyers and the low-volume manufacturers who want to produce EVs because that is how to build an EV market. We don’t need the big car companies, not yet. They are too big, too slow, too expensive and as we have seen, too opposed. We do need patient and visionary investors who seek positive change along with positive returns. We need the ingenuity and energy of engineers and entrepreneurs, many right here in California, to build EVs and create jobs. We need committed fleet buyers and enthusiastic customers to buy and drive electric vehicles and show them to their friends and neighbors as many of you already do. And we need government policy and commitment to support the efforts of these EV pioneers. Together we don’t need the auto companies to build an EV market. But after we have built one, you can be sure the auto companies will be only too glad to join in. And that’s really all we can ask. These remarks and other information are available at http://www.acpropulsion.com Thank you for you attention.