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.
Professor Michalek and the other contributors, who wrote the paper that was published by the National Academies, were very clear in saying that the Leaf has no emissions from the tailpipe. Their point is that when you weigh the emissions from the battery manufacturing process, and add those to the utility powerplant emissions, the pure electric vehicles don't do as well as hybrids.
Good point, tekochip. It's often said that it's best to be second. Let the trailblazer make the mistakes. But it's important to be right behind that trailblazer, otherwise you might be left behind.
Bob Lutz told me before I talked with Mark that the Converj/ ELR should have been on the road by now.
The ELR is perfect for the well heeled who have a high responsibility quotent.
Perhaps the most beautiful American Automobile in many decades. I'd rank it right up there with the one designed my my Friend Gordon Buehrig... the 20Grand.
Holding it back for too long is like shooting youself in the foot.
Yes these cars are conceptually like the WWII submarines... run by electric, built by Electric Boat with motor generator sets in the back and they essentially have unlimited range.
GM's designs are vastly superior to Elon's although he deserves some credit.
GM is not dipping it's toe in the water at all... it's almost up to the knee.
You have to credit Lutz with all this and for those who want to whine and cry about government involvement you should whine and cry about Ed Whitacre who may have known how to build incandescent light bulbs but had absolutely no idea what the hell a Car company is and what makes it go.
Rattner did not know what he was doing in putting ED in charge because important product has been delayed as a result of Ed's cavalier and ignorant attitude. How frequently do you change lightbulb designs? Have they changed yet?
That is something worthy of upset!
And today it was announced that GM has sold more cars in China than the US this past month.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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