Articles are surfacing that would suggest that electric cars are on their way out, or at least, they won’t be as big as many have expected. To be quite honest this would hardly be surprising. Whilst there are obvious benefits to owning an EV (such as reduced running and servicing costs), there are also many down sides, and these have kept EVs from becoming as mainstream as its gasoline rivals.
There is much to suggest that electric vehicles are on a downward trend; the Obama administration withdrew from their goal to put 1 million EVs on the roads by 2015, Nissan’s chief exec, Carlos Ghosn has announced a shift form electric cars to gasoline-electric hybrids and Uchiyamada of Toyota is also voicing concerns that the battery powered electric cars just aren’t a viable replacement for conventional cars and gasoline engines.
On the other hand the popularity of hybrid models, is sky rocketing. Sales of electric and hybrid models combined have rose to account for 3.3% of all vehicles sold in the US in 2012, after accounting for only 1% in 2004. The Toyota Prius is a huge player in the hybrid market, and it accounted for a massive portion of all hybrids sold.
Whilst our name is primarily concerned with electric cars, we are interested in the future technology of cars, especially if that technology comes under the bracket of ‘environmentally friendly’. So we are all for the use of hydrogen and developments in that area, whilst we also support hybrid vehicles. One thing is clear, should electric vehicles fall of the map, the future is still promising and manufacturers are still interested in building more economically friendly vehicles.