Image via Complex Original
Reuters, the British news giant, has claimed that electric cars might be kicking the bucket again. Since you're interested, but might not want to scale the great wall of text that was published yesterday, we've created the bullet point guide to the fall of the electric car.
Related: Electric Cars Do Twice the Environmental Damage of Gasoline Cars
Related: Toyota To Sell Hydrogen-Powered Cars By 2015
[via Reuters]
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Electric Car Sales Have Been Disappointing at Best
Carlos Ghosn, Nissan's CEO, projected that by 2020 10% of car sales would be electric. That would mean 6 million EVs sold per year. Right now, EVs account for less than 0.1% of sales in the US. The Nissan Leaf was billed as a volume EV, and Nissan had planned to sell 20,000 of them in the US, but managed to only sell 9,819. Global Leaf sales are hovering around 50,000.
Meanwhile, Mitsubishi has sold around 21,000 i MiEVs and Tesla remains as niche product for wealthy buyers.
Nissan is Shifting to Focusing on Hybrids
Nissan's CEO Carlos Ghosn is one of the world's biggest EV proponents, but even he is backing away from electric cars. Due to lackluster sales and the triple threat of "high cost, short driving range and lack of charging stations" (Reuters) that drove people away from electric cars in the '90s and at the beginning of the 20th century, Nissan is shifting focus to hybrids, promising to have 15 hybridized models on the road by 2017.
The Obama Administration Has Backed Away From its EV Goals
The Obama administration's original goal was to have one million electric cars on the road by 2015. Now, when Energy Secretary Steven Chu is asked about the target, the response is this "It's ambitious, but we'll see what happens." The administration is now saying that it is going to focus on lowering the manufacturing cost of alternative fuel vehicles, as they are currently far to expensive for the average consumer.
Toyota Has All But Canned its Electric Car Program
Last September, Toyota announced that it was scrapping its plan to attempt to sell thousands of a new, electric city car. Now the company is only going to make 100 of the mini-EV.
Hydrogen Alliances Are Being Formed
There's no doubt that the oil-burning car is on its way out, but what we've been wondering is what it will be replaced with. Two major alliances have formed for research and development of hydrogen powered cars; Toyota and BMW have teamed up, as well as Nissan, Daimler, and Ford. Putting billions of dollars into hydrogen research is not a vote for confidence in electric cars.
