Plug-In Vehicles Seen as Filling the US Roads this Year
Sales of plug-in vehicle in the US are expected to increase more than five-fold this year to 100,000 units. This could come as happy news for the EV manufacturers, but we aren’t sure as to how the conventional car makers would feel about it.
According to a CleanFleetReport.com report, in 2011, the market saw sales of around 18,000 plug-in vehicles in theUS, including 9,674 Nissan Leaf EVs and 7671 Chevrolet Volt extended-range plug-ins.
There will be a slow but steady growth in Europe, depending largely on the success of Renault with the Twizy, Zoe and Fluence, the ability of Nissan, Mitsubishi, Chevrolet (Vauxhall/Opel in Europe) and Ford to build on the 2011 launches of the Leaf, iMiEV, Volt and Focus.
For other places, the dependencies are the likes of Reva inIndiaand smart inEurope. The launch of better versions of the Toyota Plug-In Prius, Scion/IQ electric and RAV4 will be interpolating the sales curves.
The Volvo V60 plug-in hybrid, the Tesla Model S and Coda sedans, light goods vehicles such as the Kangoo and Transit Connect electric from Renault and Ford, along with a small but growing contribution from BYD and others in China, plus a handful of other “to-be-launched plug-ins”, mostly from smaller start-ups such as Amp and their Mercedes conversions will definitely support the prediction.
So where is electric motoring heading for in the future? Right now, it’s very difficult to predict. Electric cars are only just now starting to be seen as a credible alternative to “old-fashioned” petrol propelled vehicles, especially as anything more than a city runabout.
Part of the reason adoption rate has been quite low is that every element of motoring would need to change to accommodate them from car insurance to fuel, garages and car rental. It is clear that electric cars are going to take some time to fit in, but one day electric vehicles will have to become a contender to petrol vehicles, and when they do it will be very interesting to see the changes they bring.
