California to Require Reflective Coating on Windshields to Reduce Climate Change
By Scott Doggett July 1, 2009
By Scott Doggett, Contributor
California's air-quality authorities are an innovative bunch, and this month they took an unprecedented step toward making the Golden State less hazy by requiring automakers to place a reflective coating on the windshields of cars and trucks purchased in California.
The requirement is one of several that the California Air Resources Board has considered under its Cool Cars program, which is designed, as you likely guessed, to keep vehicles in the sunny state cooler.
By doing that, they reason, Californians won't need to use their vehicles' air conditioners as much, which will reduce the strain on automotive engines, which will decrease the speed with which we gobble up fossil fuels, which in turn will reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we release into the atmosphere.
Green Car Advisor first reported on the program in February, when CARB was focusing on having paint-makers tweak their automotive paints so they'd be more light reflective - as opposed to more light absorbing.
Light-absorbing paints, the king of which is black, contribute significantly to a vehicle's cabin temperature when parked in direct sunlight. Hot parked cars tend to cause their owners to reach for A-C controls the moment they enter their vehicles. Running the air conditioners adds to the workload of the vehicles, which in turn results in higher fuel consumption - you know the story.
The same is true with regard to windshields. When you consider at how much of the surface area of a car's sunny side consists of windshields, you can appreciate how important it is for the glass to be sunlight-reflective to help keep a vehicle's interior cool when parked in sunlight.
The technology used by glass manufacturers to make more reflective car windows has been around for nearly 20 years, said Mukesh Rustagi, director of strategic product management at Pittsburgh Glass Works, the largest automotive glass supplier in North America.
The technology exists and it's not particularly costly compared to, say, wiping out entire species and watching the world's glaciers - water sources for more than a billion people - melt away.
With that in mind, California's air regulators voted unanimously last week for a mandate requiring automakers to include sun-reflecting windshields on all vehicles sold within the state by 2014.
Everyone Benefits
"The end result of it is the customer gets a car that's more comfortable to ride in, air conditioners don't have to work as hard, and the atmosphere will be happier because we won't be emitting as much carbon dioxide," said board chairwoman Mary Nichols.
The auto industry complained about the expense but won an extra year to comply with the first phase of the regulation. Automakers also will be allowed to find other ways to cool down cars to avoid a tougher window standard to be phased in after 2014.
The board gave automakers more time to meet the standards after representatives for Ford Motor Co., Chrysler Group LLC, Honda Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. lined up to ask them for more time.
"We don't have a lot of spare resources right now," said Steven Douglas, senior director of environmental affairs for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. This was the same alliance that fought CARB tooth and nail over fuel-economy standards when the automakers were making enormous profits.
Trail Blazer
California has been a leader for decades in setting auto standards. Its mandates have often brought changes throughout the industry as automakers move to capture the state's huge market.
California was the first state to require the use of catalytic converters in 1975 as a way to reduce smog. A 2002 state law intended to force cleaner auto emissions was the reason the Obama administration implemented greater fuel-efficiency standards earlier this year.
Beginning with the 2012 model year, a quarter of passenger vehicles sold in California must have specially coated windshields that block 50 percent of the sun's heat from a parked car. All vehicles must have those windshields within two more years.
In 2016, windshields must block 60 percent of the sun's heat unless carmakers can demonstrate other ways to keep cars cool.
The regulation is projected to prevent 700,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere in 2020, the equivalent of taking 140,000 vehicles off the road for a year. There were nearly 22 million passenger vehicles registered in California last year.
Substantial Savings
The new windshields would cool a sedan's interior by an estimated 14 degrees Fahrenheit or 12 degrees for a pickup or SUV.
The board dismissed concerns from trade groups representing domestic and foreign car companies that sun-reflecting front glass would interfere with cell phones signals, GPS navigation, electronic passes for toll roads and tire pressure monitoring systems.
The regulation allows glass manufacturers to leave a small area of the windshield free of the metallic coating to boost wireless signals.
Drivers who replace windshields in older cars also would have to buy glass that meet the new standards.
The windshield mandate is among dozens of strategies pursued by the board in its effort to reduce California's greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, the goal set by the state's 2006 global warming law.
A proposal to require so-called "cool paints" was removed from the regulation after the auto industry complained it might have to stop selling black cars in California.
LEAVE A COMMENT
By all means, let Californians not have the option of black cars. Stopping global warming means sacrifice, right?
I wonder how much the special windshield costs, because, um, costs do matter quite a bit. Contrary to what this article suggests, no peer-reviewed studies indicate than any particular modest efforts on the table now, including immodest proposals such as Kyoto or Kyoto II, will have a noticeable long-term affect of reducing global warming.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything, but it means we better darn well know the costs and benefits, and demand our legislators know the same and base all their decisions on this knowledge.
Can we all understand what "diminishing returns" means? It is clear that someone does not understand what U factors and R values mean when it comes to heat transfer. What about the added insurance costs due to the huge increase of the cost of windshield? But then, politicians and bureaucrats don't have to know anything about what they dictate. Never mind that the price of a new car will continue it's journey away from the poorer people who will have to continue to drive older cars that pollute more. Or is this an effort to make cars unaffordable so that the dream of public transportation can become the only means of transportation that poorer people can afford. Never mind that every tax payer ends up paying more for the fare than the individual rider.
I want an efficient car that doesn't have to carry an overload of political BS.
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