Carmakers want continued support for development of electric cars

Performance ‘biggest obstacle to success’.

The performance of electric cars is the biggest obstacle to mass-market success, but governments should maintain incentives for the development of such cars, according to one of Europe’s leading carmakers.

Dieter Zetsche, the chairman of Daimler and president of ACEA, the European carmakers’ association, believes that electric cars need a range of more than 150 kilometres and charging times of less than an hour if they are to be more attractive to consumers.

The biggest obstacle to greater take-up of electric vehicles was their inferiority to combustion-engine powered cars, he said. Performance “can and will be improved,” but “is a tremendous challenge to make these vehicles competitive from a consumer’s point of view with those we’ve been making for the last 120 years.” Quicker-charging batteries currently cost €10,000-€15,000.

Zetsche flatly rejected suggestions that car industry attachment to hydrocarbon engines was holding back a shift to electric vehicles. He cited Daimler’s annual investment of €5 billion in research and development, with more than a third being spent on cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and “a good part” on alternative technologies.

Alternative engine research

The industry will spend €12bn over the next three years on alternative engine technologies with “the clear knowledge we won’t see any returns for at least seven years,” he said – an approach he described as “stupid” in economic terms. Any suggestion that the industry was “sitting back” and waiting for interest in electric vehicles to fade was “absolute nonsense”.

Government incentives

Zetsche also emphasised the importance of governments maintaining development incentives for electric vehicles, despite the pressure on public finances.

“When it comes to alternative technologies we have very low volumes. You have extraordinarily high costs at the beginning. We are taking major hits to our margins,” Zetsche said.

“As an industry we have taken a decision to invest at high levels in future technologies,” he said. While stressing that the car industry was not “asking for subsidies in the long run”, Zetsche said that there should be a “helping hand for a limited time”.

Pessimism

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However, the Spanish presidency of the Council of Ministers has faced resistance from national governments in its attempt to boost the development of a European electric car industry. And last week the European Commission recognised as over-optimistic assumptions by its trade department that one in five cars would be electric by 2020.

The Commission’s industry department estimated in April that a more ‘realistic’ target was for battery electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles to attain a market share of 1%-2% each by 2020.