March 27, 2009
California: No black cars for you!
If you think there's a limit to how intrusive government can be, rest assured there's no area of your life into which your alien bureaucratic overlords aren't willing to get their busybody tentacles into.
TTAC reports on California's latest coming regulation, intended, of course, to save the children and cute animals.
Autobloggreen recently got its paws on a presentation (PDF, read the whole thing) from the California Air Resource Board’s public “cool cars workshop.” And let’s just say the thing exudes the kind of bureaucratic overreach heretofore only imagined by folks sporting the latest in tinfoil chapeau.
Here’s the logic: cars that get hot when they sit require greater air conditioning, which increases fuel consumption and (tada!) air pollution. And since architectural surface coatings are 25-35 percent reflective, there’s no reason not to require similar levels from auto paint, right? Skyscrapers, cars; potato, potahto. CARB will require vehicle surfaces to reflect at least 20 percent of solar energy by 2012, a figure that no black auto paint can currently achieve. One third of OEM palettes must meet the 20 percent mark by then, and all OEM paints must meet the goal by 2016.
Oh, yes, and by 2016 even collision repair shops have to use the special paint. The only mitigation for these rules are if you sufficiently increase the Rd factor of your cars windshield glazing. And just to keep a song in your heart, “other compliance options are under investigation.”
Personally, I have an abiding dislike for black cars; they seem to look dirty just about the time your done toweling one dry after washing it, and they are bloody hot in the summertime.
On the other hand, they look great when clean. Which ought to be reason enough.
Soon, we'll all be driving white People's Cars, as we head to work at our state-owned collectives, dressed in our all-organic, hemp fiber Mao suits.
Happy days.
Posted by Mike Lief at March 27, 2009 07:28 AM
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Comments
I want my government-controlled home thermostat NOW.
Posted by: The Little Coach at March 27, 2009 09:35 AM
This whole thing sounds racist to me.
Why is our govt only talking about BLACK cars?
Someone call the NAACP!
Posted by: Smiley at March 27, 2009 12:34 PM