If all goes as planned, more than a million ultra-clean cars
will be zipping around California in the next decade, a 30-fold
increase from today, thanks to tough new rules recently approved
by state regulators. It's not the first time the nation has set
its sights on the million-mark for green vehicles. In 2009
President Obama pledged to put a million plug-in cars on U.S.
roads by 2015. But the president had no regulatory muscle to try
to enforce his goal. And three years later there are fewer than
20,000 all-electric and plug-ins in the U.S., says Plug-In
America, a San Francisco advocacy group. Undaunted, California
believes its clean car ambitions will be easily met because 12
of the world's leading carmakers helped craft its new rules and
because the industry has six years to begin complying with them.
The program is the first in the nation to regulate the kinds of
vehicles to be sold in a state auto market. "These regulations
were done in very close conversation with the automakers and are
based on what