Automakers Drop Electric Cars As Sales Sag

by Katherine Stapp

(IPS) NEW YORK -- The world's biggest automakers are abandoning their experiments with battery-powered cars, saying most drivers are unwilling to give up their cheaper fuel-burning vehicles.

Companies like Ford and General Motors (GM) also say they will focus on producing hybrid gas-electric vehicles and other cutting-edge technologies that offer greater versatility than electric vehicles (EVs).

But electric-car advocates say carmakers are just offering excuses so they do not have to give up producing gas guzzlers.

"They're the cleanest cars ever made, and they want to take them off the road. It just baffles," said Greg Hanssen, co-chairman of the Production Electric Vehicles Drivers Coalition, a group that is lobbying GM to extend the leases on their electric cars.

Ellen Spertus, another enthusiastic EV driver, said: "I don't expect that we'll be able to save (GM's) EV1. I just don't want the car companies to get away with claiming that electric cars are no good and nobody wants them."

Spertus and others say that electric cars are being jettisoned as "unfeasible" because carmakers don't want to comply with tougher clean air regulations.

The companies say the often quirky-looking vehicles never caught on with the public, mostly because they are expensive ($34,000 to $53,000) and have limited driving ranges of 50 to 80 miles per charge.

Last week, U.S. carmaker Ford declared that it would no longer sell EVs on the domestic market and dropped Norwegian production of the Ford EV called the Think City.

Ford says it was only able to sell 1,000 of the cars in three years, far less than anticipated.

Meanwhile, GM claims it lost about a billion dollars on the EV1, the world's first mass market battery-powered car. It has stopped making the vehicle, and plans to recall the 1,100 or so now in circulation.

"The electric vehicle market failed to materialize, not for lack of effort but for lack of customers willing to sacrifice the utility of today's gasoline-powered vehicles," said Sam Leonard, director of GM's Public Policy Center.

Some environmental groups and electric car fans disagree, accusing GM of deliberately failing to market the EV1, which made its debut in 1997. For example, they say, most U.S. citizens own two cars and could use a battery-operated vehicle just to run short errands.

The Union of Concerned Scientists points out that 80 percent of U.S. households travel under 50 miles a day, well within the range of most EVs.

Although some electric cars -- like the Think City -- look like souped-up golf carts, the EV1s are nearly indistinguishable from gas-powered vehicles, except they do not pollute.

The battle over emissions is raging hottest in California, the nation's biggest car market and the U.S. state with the strictest environmental codes.

Proponents of battery-run cars note that their phase-out coincides with a lawsuit brought by GM and DaimlerChrysler against the California Air Resources Board to block rules forcing carmakers to build zero emission vehicles (ZEVs).

Passed in 1990, the ZEV mandate requires carmakers to derive at least two percent of their sales in California from totally clean "zero-emission" vehicles. Currently, electric cars are the only ones on the market to satisfy that criteria.

The ZEV mandate was supposed to come into effect in 2003. But this summer, GM and Chrysler won an injunction from a federal judge temporarily suspending the ZEV requirements. The case is due to be heard in October, although the Air Resources Board now says it will probably just rewrite the regulations next year to make them more flexible.

While automakers insist that EVs are not practical, most are continuing to pursue alternative power systems like gas-electric hybrids and cars powered by fuel-cells, a super-clean propulsion system whose only by-product is water.

Experts say hybrids are the most immediately promising. They combine a gasoline-powered engine with an electric motor that recharges using the excess energy thrown off during braking.

Unlike electric cars, they do not need to be plugged in. They have lower emissions and about twice the fuel efficiency of regular gas-powered cars.

The two most advanced hybrids now on the market are the Honda Insight and the Toyota Prius. Much cheaper than 100 percent electric cars, they cost about $20,000 and can go as far as 600 miles on a single tank of gas.

Already 8,000 Insights are on the road. Toyota, which dominates the hybrid market, says it has sold about 100,000 of its various hybrid models in nearly two dozen countries.

The revamped Prius model has an electric motor capable of running the car if it runs out of gas -- an advantage over other hybrids that rely primarily on gasoline.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the environmental benefits of hybrid vehicles depend on how they are designed. The group advocates high-efficiency, low-emissions hybrids operating on renewable fuels.

Fuel-cell technology is even cleaner, although it will be years before any significant number of fuel-cell cars hit the market.

Fuel cells produce electricity through a reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. They have hydrogen tanks that power batteries, and their success would also depend on a wide network of hydrogen filling stations. They emit zero tailpipe emissions, just like electric cars.

Toyota plans to roll out the FCHV-4 (Fuel Cell Hybrid Vehicle 4) later this year, although it will only be leased on a test basis to government agencies, research institutions and energy companies.

All the major carmakers are racing to build prototypes, but have no plans to mass-produce fuel-cell cars until at least 2010.