EVs to go mainstream within a decade?

There's a battery moped in the back of Geely's "McCar" concept, on display at the Shanghai auto show.

There's a battery moped in the back of Geely's "McCar" concept, on display at the Shanghai auto show.

Published Apr 21, 2011

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Major carmakers' high hopes for electric vehicles are on clear display at the Shanghai motor show, but industry leaders say it could be a decade before such eco-friendly cars go mainstream.

Wary over its growing dependence on foreign oil, China plans to become a world leader in clean-energy vehicles, pledging to invest more than $14 billion (R95 billion) by 2020 - and have five million of them on the road by then.

Beijing's determination has executives predicting China, the world's largest vehicle market, will be one of the first to see widespread adoption of electric cars.

General Motors China president Kevin Wale: “Two hundred million Chinese ride electric scooters now. They know the limitations of batteries and about recharging so they don't run out of power.

“As soon as someone provides them with the right vehicle at the right price, they'll start to move towards them. The government's going to support that transition as well,” Wale added.

GM, Toyota and Volkswagen, and Chinese firms such as BYD, Geely and Chery, are among those displaying hybrid and electric cars at the Shanghai show, alongside more traditional models, as they jostle to woo Chinese buyers.

Wale explained that the scale of China's market - a record 18 million vehicles were sold in 2010 - provided Chinese carmakers with a huge laboratory to help find the right electric-car formula.

“They won't wait until research and development gives the perfect solution. They'll move much more quickly in terms of putting options in front of people and learning from that and putting the next one out,” he said.

GM signed an agreement this week with an eco-city development in the northern port city of Tianjin to provide electric vehicles that will operate on a GPS network designed to eliminate traffic jams.

Hong Kong-based auto market analyst Michael Dunne said China's drive for electric cars was motivated by its fear of being addicted to foreign oil.

“Let's be clear: This effort to go electric is 90 percent about energy security and less than 10 percent about the environment,” Dunne said, adding that China would generate most of the electricity to run the cars by burning polluting coal.

Either way, global carmakers expect China to set the pace in developing a market for electric cars.

BMW management board member Ian Robertson said: “The new energy vehicle opportunity here is probably bigger than in other countries.”

But the transition will not happen overnight. Ford forecasts that by 2020 perhaps 10 to 25 percent of global auto sales will be hybrid and electric cars.

Ford Asia Pacific President Joe Hinrichs said: “The batteries need to get smaller. They need to be capable of holding more storage and they need to be able to extend the range. But importantly, they also need to get less costly.”

Battery development “has not kept up with the hype” surrounding new energy vehicles, he said, adding that government involvement was necessary to keep innovation moving.

Hinrichs said: “It's so important to the global economy. It's not about any one country or any one industry. But it's going to take the better part of this decade to get the development cycles going better.”

For their part, Chinese automakers are powering ahead to avoid falling behind Western competitors with these new technologies, the way they did in developing conventional internal combustion engines.

Chen Hong, president of SAIC Motor, the leading Chinese manufacturer by sales, said bluntly: “We cannot wait until these technologies are fully mature, otherwise we will always be late.”

SAIC plans to start mass production of a small electric car, the Roewe E1, and a hybrid car, the Roewe 550, in the second half of 2011.

Shenzhen-based BYD, which began as a manufacturer of nickel and lithium-ion batteries, is currently testing a 12-metre-long battery bus called the K9 in Denmark.

BYD spokesman Paul Lin added that talks were underway for similar tests in Britain, the Netherlands, Singapore and Hong Kong. - AFP

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