AC balance
The modern electric car is five years old. But is that a reason to celebrate?
When the first Nissan Leaf and the first Chevrolet Volt were sold in December 2010 with a difference of a few days, a revolution was supposed to begin. The two electric cars were the first modern e-mobiles specially developed for power operation, they came from large manufacturers and were marketed worldwide. No wonder that many saw them as the heralds of a new era of clean mobility. Sobering has returned five years later.
There were also electric cars Leaf and volt already. But either it was a niche model like the Tesla Roadster or a half-heartedly converted small car like Mitsubishi's i-MiEV (Editor's note: The editor of “Spotpress” is wrong here! - The i-MiEV was the first series electric car in the world and not a “half-heartedly converted” small car!), Chevrolet and Nissan were the first two global manufacturers to subordinate the complete construction of a car to the requirements of an electric motor and battery technology. However, with slightly different approaches: While the Nissan Leaf is a pure electric car, it has Chevrolet Volt (as well as his model brother Opel Ampera, which is now available in Europe), also has an internal combustion engine on board. The primary purpose of this is to be able to charge an exhausted battery without having to refuel. For a short time, however, he can also drive the wheels directly. (Editor's note: The Spotpress editor is wrong here too: The VOLT and the Ampera were for the most part the operating strategy of e-mobiles with range extenders. The VOLTEC system with three clutches and the planetary gearbox, however, the petrol engine could also be directly translated to the drive axle. At higher speeds (from 113 km / h), this is more efficient than converting petrol into electricity in range extender mode)
Technical and historical milestones are both cars with certainty. But not revolutionaries. The problem: The road to the future of the electric car was in reality much stony than expected. Almost one million electrically powered cars have been registered worldwide in the past five years. 200.000 of these are attributable to the Nissan Leaf alone, the world's best-selling car of its kind, and Chevrolet makes another 104.000 with the Volt.
Impressive figures for a new type of drive. Enough to leave the freak niche: the technology works - even on a large scale. Nevertheless, one million is far from enough to be perceived as a revolutionary with a total vehicle output of around 300 million vehicles in the same period. In Germany, too, there are no signs of revolutionary developments. Just under 40.000 e-mobiles are completely lost between 44,4 million existing cars. If at least the new registrations gave reason for hope. But they are stagnating at around 10.000 units in the current year. The one million vehicles set by the federal government will be just as little in Germany in 2020 as the one announced by Obama in the United States at the end of this year.
The reasons for the moderate customer acceptance of the e-mobile are well known: The cars are more expensive than an internal combustion engine pedant, the range is limited and "petrol stations" are rare. Something else might also have a difficult effect: the permanent low price for fuel. At the start of the development of Leaf and Volt, these could hardly have been foreseen. If crude oil prices exploded on the world market between 2001 and 2008 and between 2009 and 2011, they have been falling at an ever increasing rate. In the meantime, they are back at the 2005 level. To save fuel costs. nobody needs electric cars.
A second factor in the rapidly declining enthusiasm for electronics could be the perceived e-mobile inflation at the beginning of the decade. Every self-respecting manufacturer announced a suitable vehicle for the near future, showed studies, promised falling prices and increasing range. The results often disappointed. Electric vehicles were often only available in miniature quantities or exclusively as leasing vehicles for commercial customers. A local restriction of the offer often caused long faces among potential buyers. The US state of California in particular can sing a song about it, since there has meanwhile been a worldwide unique electric car selection. The Japanese launched models like the Toyota RAV4 EV, for example, solely because of the strict CO2 regulations there and did not even sell anywhere else. The same applies to the Chevrolet Spark EV or the Fiat 500 E. Given the usual problems with new technology, the image of the Mauschel mobile that conveyed this model policy did not exactly create trust among customers.
And there were teething problems too. The Nissan Leaf initially had to struggle with increased battery wear, at least in the USA, and the Volt suffered from a series of vehicle fires. The technical start-up problems should have been solved by all manufacturers by now. Technical advances are hardly noticeable, however, with the Leaf there will be an option soon 50 km range (250 km in total), E-mobiles have become a little cheaper, but it is often difficult to say whether this is due to productivity improvements and economies of scale. In many cases, higher subsidies from manufacturers are likely to be the reason. The range gains of recent times are hardly attributable to improved technology, but primarily to the use of larger batteries.
Nevertheless: It continues. Nissan is planning a new edition of the Leaf for 2017, the German premium manufacturers Audi and Porsche want to launch their own electric cars on a large scale in 2018. And the infrastructure is also developing. Nissan, for example, recently announced on the edge of the Paris climate summit that it wanted to further develop the so-called smart grid technology. The e-car battery is to be integrated as a storage medium in the increasingly decentralized and renewable energy network. The batteries can also be useful as stationary storage there after the car has been used. Last but not least, the Japanese also want to simplify the loading process; they want to present a corresponding “petrol station of the future” next year. With pioneer Chevrolet, the e-car really wants to turn it into a mass phenomenon in 2017: Then the electric compact car Bolt should conquer the middle of society with a price of less than 30.000 euros. Perhaps it will be possible to assess whether this will work in another five years.
Editor's note: This article comes from the editorial pool of Spotpress. mein-auto-blog buys articles there. Claims have been made in this article that are not substantiated. Nevertheless, we decided to publish this article. The constructive discourse on the subject of e-mobility should be encouraged. The article is partly controversial about e-mobility. Apart from the wrong facts about VOLT and i-MiEV, this also makes sense in our eyes. E-mobility is a technology of the future, operation in today's everyday life requires compromises. Discussing these is in the spirit of e-mobility.