It seems that you only have to slam the doors of an electric car to prompt a headline somewhere or other. Tesla, which likes to see itself as the Porsche of electric cars, even went so far as to issue a press release to mark the delivery, to a German law student, of its 700th Roadster.
Of more relevance to anyone who might actually buy a mass-produced electric car, the Frankfurt Motor Show was also a cue for car-makers to talk up their electrifying plans. For example, Carlos Ghosn, head of Renault, said that over the next three years the company plans to produce four new battery-powered models. Volvo and Volkswagen were among other companies making similar high-voltage announcements at Frankfurt.
As before, some of these unveilings were of vehicles that will not roll into, let alone out of, showrooms for several years. VW talked of 2013. Renault promised sales of a four-door Renault Fluence ZE, perhaps by 2011.
Car-makers are confident that electric vehicles can begin to have a real impact in less than a decade. When he talked to the BBC, Ghosn forecast that "The electric car will account for 10 percent of the global market in 10 years."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8260722.stm
With Renault-Nissan alone talking of investing some €4 billion, you might think that the era of the electric car has arrived. Think again. Positive puffery from enthusiasts hasn't quite silenced all critics. Naysayers are, though, in short supply.
Apart from a scare story about squashed pigeons –electric cars are too quiet to prompt the dumb birds to take evasive action – the most sceptical comments came from Jack Short, secretary general of the International Transport Forum.
Frankfurt was also Short's cue to offer his opinions. You might not have read much about his observations, though. The media gave less space to his comments than to those of the salesmen.
http://www.internationaltransportforum.org/Press/PDFs/2009-09-17.pdf
Short's main point was that even if the optimists are correct, and electric cars do make up 10 per cent of new vehicles by 2020, "90 per cent of new cars that year and a much larger share of the fleet will still use internal combustion engines". The reason for pointing out this seemingly unpalatable fact of life is that too much talk of shiny new technology can mean that car makers pay too little attention to the other 90 per cent of cars that people will buy a decade from now.
As Short put it, "policy to improve the performance of combustion technologies is as important as supporting electric vehicles". His line is that we can also reduce carbon emissions from conventional vehicles by 50 per cent and in a cost-effective way. "This is where transport can deliver over the medium term."
With the next UN Climate Change Conference due in Copenhagen, dubbed COP15, in December, we can expect plenty of grand statements about national aspirations. Fortunately, if the event's web site is anything to go by, transport seems to be on the agenda. Unfortunately, the site's material suggests that the electric car industry is gearing up to milk that PR opportunity for all that it is worth. Let's hope the sceptics – or realists as they would probably like to be known – also receive a hearing.
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