Car makers gearing up for electric vehicles

Some of the cars, either fitted with an additional electric engine as a support to the conventional combustion motor or built complete with zero-emission E-Drive, could be seen at this month’s Geneva Motor Show.

French car maker Peugeot is launching in October the electric car I-On which is almost identical to the Japanese Mitsubishi i-MieV. Nissan is following with the Leaf while Mercedes is planning a small production run of the A-Class on electric technology. General Motors is launching the Chevy Volt and the European Opel Ampere next year with a planned production run of 60,000 units.

Daimler, which is working on plans to mass produce an electric car version of the Smart, has just announced that it is cooperating with the Chinese battery and car producer BYD on developing an electric car mainly for the Chinese market.

BMW is working on a "megacity vehicle" project of small electric cars fitted with lightweight body panels and electric engines. Plans are to produce the electric vehicles at the eastern German Leipzig factory starting in 2015.

A definite latecomer to electric technology is Europe’s largest car maker Volkswagen, which lost time by concentrating a lot of its energy on low-consumption combustion engines. But in Geneva VW CEO Martin Winterkorn threw the gauntlet down to his competitors by announcing that "we want to build the electric car that everyone can afford."

Next year an electric version of the VW Golf will be supplied to selected customers. The year 2013 will see the launch of the electric  car Up, the E-Golf and the E-Jetta.

Toyota is meanwhile concentrating on hybrid technology combining the combustion engine with electric motors. It sees the hybrid as an alternative and not as a transition vehicle to the pure electric car. It cites the expense of the lithium ion batteries as the big obstacle to a market breakthrough of electric vehicles.

In fact electric vehicles can cost as much as 50 per cent more than the same car running on a traditional petrol engine. The Bain consultancy finds however that in Europe alone demand for Electric Vehicles is at 100,000 and more per year. Fans of the electric car can be found in the metropolitan centres where most commuters travel less than 30 kilometres per day by car.

Tax subsidies for electric vehicles and mass production could in the long run reduce the cost of the batteries by as much as half.

But in a recent interview the head of the French battery producer Saft, John Searle, called talks on French state subsidies as "frustrating." He argues that "if you want to compete against such an established technology as the combustion engine you need help."

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