WI: ZEV Mandate followed ?

The Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Program is designed to achieve the state’s long-term emission reduction goals by requiring manufacturers to offer for sale specific numbers of the cleanest car technologies available, which include: battery electric, fuel cell, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. ZEV regulation was first adopted in 1990 as part of LEV I standards, and has undergone significant periodic modifications since that time.
At the time of adoption, CARB required that 2% of the vehicles that large manufacturers produced for sale in California in 1998 had to be ZEVs, increasing to 5% in 2001 and 10% in 2003. The ZEV mandate was ultimately adjusted to eliminate the “ramp up” years but left in place the 10% ZEV requirement for 2003. The program was adjusted again in 1998 to allow partial ZEV (PZEV) credits for low emission vehicles that were not pure ZEVs to achieve partial credits toward the overall requirement. Further modifications to the program that were made in 2001 allowed large manufacturers to meet their 10% ZEV requirement with 2% pure ZEVs, 2% Advanced Technology PZEVS, and 6% PZEVs. However, a lawsuit resulted in an injunction that prohibited CARB from enforcing those 2001 ZEV for model years 2003 or 2004. Parties to the lawsuit ended litigation once the Board adopted amendments to the ZEV regulation in 2003,

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http://transportpolicy.net/index.php?title=California:_ZEV

Ultimately car companies got away with only producing lower emission gasoline vehicles and gas-electric hybrids in addition to a few dozen prototype Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles that weren't offered to the public. Under the new regulation this was enough to comply with the mandate.

What if the lobying from car companies, oil companies, the federal government etc hadn't been sufficient to water down the legislation/mandate passed and the original goal of 10% Zero Emmissions Vehicles (ZEVs) by 2003 had been followed. How would the recent (post-1990) history of battery electric vehicles and plug in hybrids look.

In OTL several car companies produced electric vehicles to comply with the mandate. These included the
GM EV-1
GM S-10 EV
Toyota RAV4 EV
Ford Ranger EV
Ford Th!nk EV
Honda EV Plus
Nissan Altra EV.

However all these vehicles were discontinued with the end of the mandate and most of these vehicles were only offered to utility companies for lease and not the general public. When they were offered to the general public it was usually for lease only which allowed Automakers the opportunity to recall the vehicles when their lease ran out and reposses them. A few hundred Toyota RAV4-EVs and Ford Ranger EVs were sold to the public at the end of their lease but that's it. They never produced more than 3,000 or so of these electric vehicles, nowhere near close to complying with the mandate.

In OTL Charging Stations for these late 1990s EVs were introduced in public parking lots and elsewhere, but ultimately went mostly unused as the few EVs produced for them dissapeared.

Any hypothetical EV models we would see in this alternate-timeline?

Well I read that at a car show in Shanghai, they had a hybrid EV1 model presented, and that there were plans for a four door EV1.

IIRC, all those vehicles use NiCd or NiMH batteries. That strongly limits what's possible with battery powered vehicles. Both in terms of power/mass ratio (Li ion is about twice that of NiMH, better than that over NiCd), and rechargeability. Whether you have more recharging cycles with Li, I don't remember, but with the Nickel batteries, especially NiCd, you had strong memory effects, so if you regularly recharged after using 10% of the charge, you end up with only that 10% available.... NOT something that is possible for consumer cars.

If they HAD kept on with those electric cars, Li battery replacements would probably have been available in a few more years, and might MIGHT have been usable as drop in replacements. But. They didn't know that then.

The ZEV initiative was just a bit too far too soon.