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FRANKFURT: Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW—all of Germany’s biggest
carmakers—now want to launch electric cars, getting on the
environmentally friendly bandwagon after lagging behind their peers.
Specialists in high-end, mostly high-emission automobiles, German
companies have built a reputation for making exciting cars but ones
that are heavy polluters and consume a lot of fuel.
That branding has become a liability as oil
prices climb ever higher and environmental regulations are tightened
amid growing fears about global warming.
After Daimler and VW, which want to roll out
electric models in 2010, BMW said last week it would begin to test
several hundred electric models of its Mini brand. BMW did not say
when it planned to sell such vehicles however, nor did it indicate
if the BMW brand would also offer an electric car.
“It remains completely open,” a company
spokesman told Agence France-Presse.
As for hybrid cars that use a gasoline engine
combined with an electric motor, they should arrive “at the end of
next year,” he said.
VW boss Martin Winterkorn has repeatedly said
that, “the future belongs to the electric car.”
As to whether such declarations are a sign the
major car makers are ready for a serious change in strategy, German
expert Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer said, “It’s important but there is
also a bit of marketing mixed in.”
Sector players agree that no large-scale series
of electric cars will hit the streets in the next several years. One
German analyst said “10 to 20 years,” while Bjoern Eberleh, who
works at the research group Akasol, said, “No earlier than
2012.”
“The Germans are behind,” said Eberleh.
“They have earned a lot of money for a long time with their
powerful cars. They were very happy with the situation.”
BMW has invested in research on hydrogen fuel
cells but “the infrastructure does not exist yet,” its spokesman
acknowledged, in particular service stations. And while the group
refuses to announce it will give up on the technology, its spokesman
estimated it still needed “around 20 years.”
Like motorists almost everywhere in the world,
Germans have seen the price at the pump leap and know that higher
taxes on the most polluting vehicles are coming.
“Hybrids and electric vehicles are going to be
profitable, everyone is getting quickly into the act,”
Dudenhoeffer said, projecting that by 2025, all cars sold in Europe
would be either hybrids or electric.
-- AFP
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