The US market for all-electric cars is charging up, with plug-in
vehicles rolling off US dealer lots despite much higher costs, battery
fire scares and falling gasoline prices, the AFP has reported.
Plug-in
cars racked up strong sales in the first six months of the year,
automakers said, even with their
tall
sticker prices and lifetime
operating costs up to $6,000 more than conventional gasoline-run
vehicles.
General Motors reported it sold more of its $39,000
Chevrolet Volts in the first six months than it did in all of last year,
with 1,760 of the cars delivered to buyers in June.
Toyota said
it has sold over 4,300 of its all-electric version of the popular Prius
hybrid since it launched the model in March — even though the plug-in
Prius costs, at the $32,000 base price, a third more than the cheapest
hybrid Prius.
Sales of Nissan’s $35,000 Leaf, one of the first to
plumb American drivers’ desire for plug-ins, eased slightly amid higher
competition and a change in distribution strategy, but still hit 3,148
units.
The drop owed mainly to the Leaf not having completed the
move from its original Web-driven, built-to-order system to more of a
traditional dealer-based model, said Nissan spokesman Brian Brockman.
At the high end of the auto market, sales of electrics are full of spark as well.
Fisker
Automotive said it has sold more than 1,000 of its $105,000 luxury
plug-in sports car, the Karma, since the start of the year.
And
the waiting list for the Tesla Model S, billed as “the world’s first
premium electric sedan,” numbered some 10,000 when it released the first
cars on June 22. Reserving one of the cars — base price $50,000 —
required a $5,000 deposit.
Buyers appear to be rejecting any hints
that the vehicles might have a downside. Reports of battery fires have
hampered the launches of the Volt, Karma and models from BYD, the
Chinese company aiming at an exclusively electric vehicle business.
Those
worries are being addressed, builders say, and battery specialists are
improving their fuel cell technology. A123 Systems of Massachusetts
recently disclosed it had come up with a technology to eliminate the
threat of fire in high-tech lithium batteries.
Still, there is
also the cost. The cars themselves are pricey compared to their
internal-combustion engine cousins, and gas prices have fallen,
lessening the incentive to switch to an all-electric vehicle.
All
told, electric passenger cars currently cost $5,000 to $6,000 more to
their owners than an equivalent fossil fuel car over the vehicle’s
lifetime, according to a new study by the Paris-based International
Transport Forum.
“The current generation of electric cars
represents a significant improvement over previous ones. Nonetheless,
electric vehicles remain more expensive than their fossil-fueled
equivalents and may need government assistance to trigger wide-spread
uptake,” the study said.
But the demand for electrics keeps rising, buyers are getting more choice and the technology is improving.
Ford has begun selling an electric model of its Focus.
Honda
is rolling out an electric version of the Fit later this month, but
only expects to sell 1,100 over the next two years. Spokesman Sage Marie
said the company will go slow initially to make sure customers are
satisfied with their new electric vehicles.
“The customer experience is very important to us,” said Marie, noting the Fit EV has a range of only 82 miles (132 kilometers).
And
Nissan is committed to opening a new assembly plant for its
all-electric vehicles in Smyrna, Tennessee later this year. The project
is being financed with $2 billion of loan guarantees from the US
Department of Energy.
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