News: General Motors stands by electric cars in the face of dismal sales

 

57,000 sales out of just over 14-million. That's how many electric cars sold in the United States last year, causing more than a few people to announce the second death of the electric car. But General Motors' US president Mark Reuss has come out fighting for the battery car, saying that he expects Americans to embrace the technology more and more. 

“The electric vehicle is not dead. We at GM believe that the public will accept and embrace electric vehicles. Some people already have" said Reuss at the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit. 

 He also promised that not only would the next generation of Chevrolet Volt, sold here as the Opel Ampera, have a greater battery range, it would also be thousands of dollars cheaper, as GM is now able to make batteries and electric drivetrains more efficiently. 

News: Car makers not betting on electric cars

 

Most car makers don't expect electric vehicles to take more than 15% of the global market in the next 12 years, according to a survey carried out by KPMG.

KPMG surveyed more than 200 global motor industry executives and found that most were investing in downsized petrol and diesel engines to keep ahead of ever tightening emissions regulations, rather than going for pure electric vehicles. The survey certainly seems to back up something that Toyota said late last year, when its European sales boss said that customer needs were better met by hybrids and plugin hybrids than by pure battery EVs.

“When you look at current MPG estimates for new cars, it’s very evident that automakers are continuing to significantly improve engine efficiency”, KPMG’s National Automotive industry leader Gary Silberg said, speaking to The Detroit News. “What’s clear is that the internal combustion engine is not going anywhere soon.”

The study also found that more than 60% of car makers were preparing to invest in their factories to make production more efficient and that the executives polled picked BMW, Hyundai and VW as the car makers most likely to increase their global sales over the next year.

News: german government may subsidise electric cars

 

Angela Merkel's government is considering a dramatic increase in the subsidies for buying an electric car, as German buyers continue to shun plug-in vehicles.

The German car market (although it dipped dramatically in September) was a healthy 2.1-million vehcile sales so far in 2012, but just over 2,000 of these were electric cars – 1 0.1% market share, and this despite Chancellor Merkel's previously stated goal to have one million electric cars on German roads by 2020.

Neighbouring France already gives electric car buyers a €5,000 kickback, and the Merkel government is mulling other options, such as a 10-year exemption from road tax. But recent developments, not only a falling car market and reduced consumer sentiment (which will make buyers more conservative and less likely to spend money on a battery car) but also Toyota's announcement that it's going to shun all-electric vehicles in favour of plugin hybrid development, will not make Frau Merkel's task any easier.

Any subsidy, if decided on, won't kick in until the back end of next year at the earliest, but Mercedes CEO Dieter Zetsche reckons that without it, the maximum possible market in Germany for electric cars is a mere 600,000 units.