Electric vehicle sales numbers are anemic, and EV battery makers are fighting for their lives. So why are automakers rolling out a steady stream of new battery-powered cars?
Last week, we told you about the unveiling of two battery-powered vehicles: General Motors' Spark EV and Chrysler's Fiat 500e. This year, pure electric vehicles have been rolled out by Tesla, Honda, Ford, Coda, and Toyota. In 2013, BMW will unveil its all-electric i3.
"It's a head-scratcher, looking at it from the outside," Mike VanNieuwkuyk, executive director of global automotive at J.D. Power & Associates, told us. "There are so many battery-electric products being developed, and to date there are not a lot of sales."
Check out some of the EVs that are making news.
Ford's Focus Electric initially launched in California, New York, and New Jersey, as well as in some selected metropolitan markets. The company predicted sales of 5,000 vehicles in 2012. (Source: Ford Motor)
Recent predictions from industry analysts make the situation even more of a puzzler. In November, J.D. Power released a study forecasting miniscule BEV sales numbers. The 2012 Electric Vehicle Ownership Experience Study predicted battery-electrics would make up less than 1 percent of all vehicles sold in the US in 2015. Lux Research and Pike Research have also published dire forecasts for pure EVs and EV batteries in the past year.
Nevertheless, there are reasons for the growing parade of BEVs. Some automakers (including Nissan and Tesla, to name two) are true believers in the potential of the all-electric market. But even for those that may just be testing the waters, there are good reasons for rolling out pure electric cars. They include legal compliance, government subsidies, manufacturability, and a dash of practicality.
"Part of it is there's a risk to being last to the party," Kevin See, an industry analyst for Lux Research, told us. "So while most of us believe it's too early, it's preferable to do it now, rather than miss it altogether."
Experts say some of the recent rollouts have been motivated by zero-emission laws, such as those in California. For example, Chrysler unveiled the Fiat 500e hatchback despite earlier proclamations by CEO Sergio Marchionne that he didn't believe in electric cars. "I'm not scared, I just won't do" electrification, he told Automobile Magazine this summer. "I just will not do it. I think we're smoking illegal materials if we think we're going to make those [profitably]. It just won't work." When Chrysler unveiled the 500e for the press last week, it said the vehicle would be sold only in California.
Greencarreports.com called five of this year's battery-electric introductions "compliance cars" -- the Spark EV, the Fiat 500e, the Ford Focus Electric, Honda Fit EV, and the Toyota RAV4 EV. The website based its assessment on projected sales numbers, sales outside California, and willingness to sell (rather than lease) the vehicles.
Yes, and since I generate my power from solar, there are no powerplant emissions associated with my Leaf either. (There are of course emissions during the manufacturing process, as there are for all cars - for all products we use, in fact.)
"... if electrics made sense they would sell like hotcakes."
Being in love with a car is an emotional state. Tesla makes cars pepole want to own once they drive it. Those that can afford a Mercedes or a Panamera often do, and Tesla is only shooting for a 10th of the 250,000 premium market cars sold.
It took about 12 years for digital camera to totaly replace photochemical photography. I figure starting with the Leaf, double that before most cars sold will be fully battery electric.
Seems like every Post Office in the US does a long test on electric delivery trucks, deterimies it would save them millions and then orders the same thing they always did. The fix is still in.
That "study" is prety vauge with phrases like, "In contrast, if plug-in vehicles are charged using coal-generated electricity, they could cause several thousands of dollars more damage per vehicle."
Really? "could cause"?? That's opinion, not a study and only a shrinking handfull of states are running on 100% coal. All other states have EVs as cleaner. It does go on to say, " There are myriad other arguments for supporting vehicle electrification beyond human health, environmental, and oil-displacement effects. This long list might include job creation, reducing the trade deficit by shifting from foreign to domestic fuel sources, enabling a distributed storage resource to support the integration of intermittent renewable electricity generation, reducing oil revenues to states hostile to U.S. interests, hedging against an anticipated oil-scarce or carbon-constrained future, improving regulatory control over emissions associated with poor vehicle maintenance, generating positive externalities by encouraging innovation, encouraging domestic development of strategic technical competency and intellectual property, reducing nonfinancial political and human suffering effects from war and political instability, and promoting international environmental justice. However, because HEVs and PHEVs with smaller battery packs provide more air-emissions reduction and oil displacement per dollar spent and offer lifetime costs competitive with conventional vehicles, it is not clear that directing near-term subsidies toward vehicles with large battery packs would produce superior results on any of these objectives.
So if you are referencing it as an attack on "green" transpotation, it sure makes up for it by pointing out all the other reasons for getting off oil.
Try again? You brought up Al Gore - I simply responded.
As for addressing climate change, we need to be wiser than to keep falling for the problem-reaction-solution gimmicks played on us to keep funneling money from the masses to the "elite". Funny that their "solutions" always seem to place more limitations on us than on them.
Nonetheless, I'm curious to know why the very concerning issue of oxygen depletion isn't getting the same attention that's being given to rising CO2 levels. It would not surprise me to discover how much it has to do with how the "solutions" meet the moneychangers' true objectives.
Do you have any evidence of your charges against Gore? Even if true, Gore is out-bankrolled by the propaganda efforts of the fossil fuel industry by several orders of magnitude.
In any event Gore is irrelevant to any question over climate change. Try again.
I guess it depends on whose twisted version of reality we want to adhere to. The oil cartels have stood in the way of developing other energy paradigms while limiting their product for maximum profit. Al Gore tried to convince and manipulate the masses that consensus could be reached in premature scratching-the-surface "science" for the financial and political gain of his side of the energy market. Neither side has represented themselves in an ethically honest manner, and have been unable to hide that their true motivation is for money and control rather than for the empowerment and good of the rest of us.
Should we expect a more radically abrupt shift? How many early car companies survived the sharpest growth decades for automobiles? How many dot com businesses survived the '90s boom and did that result in the internet going out of business? I'm not saying EV makers will go bankrupt, but the quick high profit strategy of selling as many high margin gas guzzlers while they are hot, with no eye toward the future, hasn't worked out too well either.
Keep trying to scare off early adapters, Mr. Murray. But your anti-EV bias is showing.
Which reminds me it's about time again for another Global Warming is an Al Gore Hoax article from UBM.
If the government would have used the bail outs to force car makers to devise a common battery standard, then electric and hybrid cars would be much more attractive.
If all of them used the exact same form factor battery back, then you could establish battery exchanges. You could buy a membership, and it would be not only an insurance policy to cover battery failure risk, but allow for greatly extenede range, simply by replacing the battery pack instead of waiting for it to recharge.
Then many more people would feel there was not longer any risk involved in buying an electric or hybrid vehicle.
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