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| The Nissan Leaf, the most successful electric car in the world. |
With the collapse of the most ambitious electric cars scheme in this part of the world at the weekend, it's time to wonder if the spark has gone out in the whole EV experiment,
writes Brian Byrne.
Better Place, substantially funded with Israeli venture capital, in partnership with Renault had hoped to make a big EV impact with operations in Denmark and Israel.
The initiative set up charging and battery-swap infrastructures, and Renault envisaged 100,000 electric car sales between the two countries, mainly from fleets.
Just 900 electric cars were bought in Israel under the scheme, and around 400 in Denmark. Better Place has already lost more than €431m on the adventure, and expects more losses as its winding-up in the Israeli court system progresses.
In a statement, Renault said the windup decision 'does not at all call into question the electric vehicle strategy of the Renault-Nissan Alliance'.
Here in Ireland a big Greens-fuelled hype was rolled out in 2008, a combined effort involving the ESB and Renault-Nissan, with smaller electric involvement from PSA Peugeot-Citroen and Mitsubishi.
The Government of the day trumpeted a 10 percent electric cars penetration by 2020, the ESB promised electric charging points at key points on the motorway system as well as in every significant town, and offered free charging points in the homes of the first 2,000 private buyers.
Local representatives of the key car companies producing electric cars talked in terms of 1,000 cars a year sales, possibly more.
At this point, it's the ESB which has come closest in fulfilling the promises. Just now there are in excess of 1,300 public charging points around the country. And through its eCars initiative, the company has done its bit in several ways to make the public and fleet operators aware of advantages which electric vehicles can offer.
Trouble is, the EV car sales haven't hit the targets. Haven't come close. Just over 200 electric passenger cars have been registered over the last three years, and around 50 electric vans.
The best performance has been Nissan's Leaf, of which 134 have been registered. The other main mover has been the Renault Fluence ZE, coming to market in 2012 a year later than the Leaf, and with 66 registered in that year. The Nissan is still attracting interest, with 19 registered this year, while there have been no Fluence ZEs listed so far in 2013, according to Motorcheck.ie.
Interesting too is the breakdown of company registrations compared to private ones. Just three of the Fluences have been registered privately, while only 24 of the Leafs have been registered to companies. Obviously, Nissan managed to persuade more private buyers of the usefullness of their EV product.
In all, last year, the market penetration of electric cars here was just under 0.2 percent. In terms of the Greens and Government forecasts five years ago, it's not looking good on the 10 percent market share for seven years' time. There are now five times more public charging points around the country than there are cars to use them. If they can find one where the parking space is not already occupied by a petrol, or more likely, diesel car.
And that's the thing. In a part of the world, Europe, where the makers of cars in all brands have been upping their efficiency by almost quantums over the last decade, mostly in diesel but most recently in low-capacity/high-power petrols, the whole EV scenario with its expense, range limitations, and concerns about battery deterioration simply doesn't fit in the financial and lifestyle calculations.
It doesn't mean the electric car is dead — again, like when GM killed its EV-1 late 90s experiment, subsequently generating a US hallmark conspiracy theory, it may be that the concept is still before its time.
In the US, sales of BEVs (mostly the Leaf with a bunch of very expensive Teslas in the mix) are actually on the rise. In 2012 sales grew on an upward trend through the year to more than 14,000, as part of some 53,000 plug-in electrics as a whole which include the range-extended cars like the Chevy Volt. In the same year, 435,000 hybrid cars were sold. Out of total car sales in the US market of 14.5m. For the pure electric BEVs that's a 0.1 percent penetration, half the Ireland rate.
This year already, almost the same number of BEVs have been registered there, and the growth trend is positive. The hybrids sales to date might be rather less than expected, at around 164,000 units. But it's all still tiny.
Worldwide, pure electric car sales in Japan represented 28 percent of the total numbers sold in 2012, followed by the US with 26 percent, China with 16 percent, France with 11 percent and Norway with 7 percent. But Norway also has in terms of EV market penetration by driving population the highest in the world, at 3.7 percent.
That's enviable, and probably why every major carmaker is still pushing the electric button. I've driven lots of EVs, including an electric Focus which is shortly going into production, for instance. There are a number of electric VWs upcoming, as well as a whole new range of BMW-built electric cars. Mercedes-Benz is pumping money into a range of Smart EVs.
Carmakers don't do that kind of thing for the fun of it. Still, it's hard to see electric motors replacing the old internal combustion engine for quite a long time to come, even if they are quite fun to drive.
As have been, for decades and decades, carnival bumper cars.
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