Toyota (surprise!) leads the pack in CARB's ZEV credit list— Autoblog Green

Earlier today, and very quietly, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) released all of the zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) credit balances. You can see the raw numbers for yourselfhere, but they might not make a whole lot of sense at first glance. If they don't, come back and we'll try and parse them together.

The table we're interested in is the one labeled"California Zero Emission Vehicle Credit Balances as of October 1, 2010 (g/mi NMOG)."These figures are expressed as grams per mile of NMOG (non-methane organic gases). On the one hand, CARB needs to use these figures because it is a function of the original ZEV regulation. Also, using the NMOG figures and ways to adjust for vehicles by year as a way to benefit companies (likeToyota) that took an early risk and brought cars like the Prius to market early. Still, it kind of seems that CARB is obscuring the numbers of ZEV credits that the automakers have by reporting where each automaker stands in grams of NMOG instead of just saying flat-out how many ZEV credits an OEM has. The good news is that, starting in 2013, CARB will move to a credit reporting system, so we won't need to deal with this confusion for much longer. Follow usafter the jumpfor the details on how Toyota is leading the ZEV credit pack.

{Source:CARB}

California Zero Emission Vehicle Credit Balances as of October 1, 2010(g/mi NMOG)
Manufacturer	ZEVs (excluding NEVs)	NEVs	AT PZEVs	PZEVs
American Custom Golf Cars	0.000	0.228	0.000	0.000
BMW	106.000	0.000	0.000	285.480
Chrysler Group	113.319	816.071	0.000	0.000
Ford	329.486	1,123.891	510.473	1,293.674
FUJI Heavy Industries/Subaru	0.000	0.000	0.000	32.246
General Motors	449.515	869.883	495.711	174.480
Honda	375.205	804.666	998.462	192.069
Hyundai	31.360	0.000	0.000	1.567
KIA	23.320	0.000	0.000	15.512
Land Rover	0.000	0.000	0.000	12.020
Mazda	0.000	0.000	0.000	212.381
Mercedes Benz	28.520	193.066	0.000	0.000
Mitsubishi	1.400	0.000	0.000	21.757
Nissan	255.737	0.000	0.000	1,514.684
Tesla	0.000	0.000	0.000	0.000
Toyota	1,344.304	0.000	5,471.827	1,167.800
Volkswagen	35.585	0.000	18.736	8.037
Volvo	0.000	0.000	0.000	85.941
Zipcar	0.000	0.000	0.000	13.718
TOTALS	3,093.751	3,807.805	7,495.210	5,031.368

Right now, the best way to determine how many credits a company has is to look at the just-released g/km NMOG rating and divide that by .035 (the current fleet average requirement, see the very bottom of that CARB link). So, we can see that Honda has around 10,700 credits and Toyota has maybe 38,400 credits. The trouble, though, is that these aren't really transferable to the number of qualified zero-emission vehicles a company has sold because vehicles sold earlier this decade were valued with more credits than those made today. Also, the ZEV regulations have been amended over the years. In fact, Krista Eley, CARB's air pollution specialist, said that"It's pretty much impossible,"to get to the number of vehicles. This is done on purpose, she said, since,"The agreement that we came to with stakeholders was to not reveal every gory detail of the calculations."She also said that it's not very accurate to divide by .035 to get the credits, but that's the best we can do right now based on public information. CARB does say that, 1.7 million vehicles"have been delivered for sale in California as a result of the ZEV regulation."This breaks down to:"300 fuel cell vehicles, 5,100 battery electrics, 28,500 NEVs, 300,000 clean hybrids and 1,400,000 clean gasoline vehicles."

Even if we can't get to the precise credit or vehicle figures, Jay Friedland, the legislative director for Plug In America, told AutoblogGreen that the NMOG numbers are,"important because you can see who has significant balances they need to make up."So, who has positive balances for ZEV credits? These companies do (listed in decreasing order):Toyota,General Motors,Honda,Ford,Nissan,Chrysler,BMW,Volkswagen,Hyundai,Mercedes-Benz,KIAandMitsubishi. CARB says that all"manufacturers subject to the ZEV regulation are in compliance through model year 2009,"so all this really means is that these companies now have the flexibility to either sell dirtier cars (unlikely, don't you think?) or to trade the credits to other automakers,like Tesla did.

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