Electric cars kaput
EUReferendum.com -
It was in October last year that Handelsblatt indicated that all was not well with the plan to produce (and sell) a million electric cars in Germany by 2020.
Now, despite the pivotal role of electric cars in future energy management systems, the German car industry is effectively giving up the struggle to produce electric models and will now concentrate on producing hybrid vehicles, and on fuel cell technology.
According to Die Welt, Audi has “completely pulled the plug” and BMW is not going to expand its range beyond its compact car.
Nor are the Germans on their own in finding electric cars hard going. Bloomberg reports that Nissan has put its electric-vehicle business under the direct supervision of the chief operating officer after sales of the Leaf missed the company’s expectations.
Deliveries of Nissan’s flagship electric car in the US, we are told, failed to reach even half its 20,000 target for last year, a “blow” to the company’s Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn. He forecast that electric cars would become so popular that they would account for at least ten percent of global car sales by the end of the decade.
The problem is highlighted by this report, which makes the obvious point – which has clearly eluded Ghosn – that the electric car is a short-range vehicle, and an extremely expensive option.
All this is window dressing for the media. The fact is an American guy did make a water powered dune buggy and drove it across America, it was based on fairly simple technology too, he was killed (probably by Big Oil) for his trouble. The rotary engine with its 270′ power ‘stroke’ is the best engine for hydrogen power systems. In reality the internal combustion engine is going to be around for a long time yet. The fact is that we could have the water powered car tomorrow, if vested interest corporations would stop interfering all the time.