General Motors Corp., which once championed electric cars, plans to use California’s energy crisis as ammunition in a renewed attack next week on the state’s already watered-down zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) rules, according to the L.A. Times. GM’s top energy executive said in an interview that the company will argue to the California Air Resources board on Thursday, Jan. 25, that it would be unwise in the midst of an electricity shortage to require automakers to produce vehicles that must draw from the state’s maxed-out power grid. In its present form, the so-called ZEV mandate would require the major automakers to produce 23,000 electric vehicles a year for sale or With technologies available today, the only pure ZEVs are battery-powered electrics that must be plugged in to the grid to be recharged. But powering them would take less than 0.06 percent of the state’s energy output, said air board spokesman Rich Varenchek. An electric car’s daily drain on the system is equivalent to the electricity consumed by a single typical household – a number on which the air board and GM appear to agree. But where GM insists this is too much, clean-car proponents maintain that such usage has little effect because most car battery recharging is done overnight, when demand is lowest. At Thursday’s meeting, the air board will consider proposals to cut the required number of ZEVs by 60 to 80 percent, or to as few as 4,600 vehicles a year. The proposals have outraged environmentalists yet failed to mollify auto executives, many of whom see no ZEV rules as the best plan.