Vehicle Electrification - June 26, 2013 - 4

Keeping the faith
amid the first EV
price war
The world isn’t exactly beating a
path to electric passenger vehicles,
as engineers working on those
programs are painfully aware. As
the second half of 2013 begins,
consider the following news items
from June:
• A survey of German drivers by the
ADAC automobile association
showed that they are becoming increasingly skeptical about EVs and
that their expectations of the technology had been reduced significantly.
• Recent launches of Ford’s Focus
EV and the Honda Fit EV would be
termed disasters based on their
first-year sales rates, if the cars
were conventionally powered mainstream products.
• General Motors slapped aggressive new deals of up to $4000 on its
Chevrolet Volt to try to charge-up
sales. In similar moves, Fiat,
Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Toyota
slashed prices and juiced up their
incentives in what has become the
first price war of the modern EV era.
• Chevy jumped in with bargainbasement pricing on its 2014 Spark
EV directly at launch, prompting a
GM truck engineer to quip,
“Thankfully, Silverado sales are
strong.”
• Daimler is reviewing options for
its Li-Tec battery-cell joint venture

June 26, 2013

Foreword

Lindsay Brooke SAE Senior Editor

with Evonik. Sale of the venture
would underscore the slow demand
for EVs.
Despite generous subsidies and
media exposure, sales of electric
cars in the U.S. and Europe remain
far below expectations. Among the
many factors continuing to suppress them is the industry’s success in wringing greater efficiency
out of gas-powered cars and
trucks, and hybrids.
As Steve Poulos, GM’s Global
Chief Engineer for vehicle electrification systems, commented to me
recently, “Once you own a vehicle
that gets 50 mpg, it feels like it’s almost free. At 50 mpg I don’t think
most people care what the powertrain is.” (Poulos talks about GM’s
next-gen eAssist system on page
21.)
So, the more efficient combustion-engined vehicles become, the
tougher it will be for EV penetration
to grow without purchase subsidies. The early adopters among the
EV fan base have already bought
their electric cars. Now it’s up to the
market and good old competition to
drive sales into the mainstream.
That’s no simple task.
Keep in mind the OEMs will build
zero-emission vehicles because
they need them for regulatory compliance. For the short term at least

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June 26, 2013, Volume 4, Number 3.
SAE International Vehicle Electrification
(ISSN 2159-4279) is published 6 times
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Vehicle Electrification - June 26, 2013

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