By Paul Berton
Here comes the electric car, but will motorists buy it?
It seems the consensus from the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this week is that the future of the automobile is electric. Almost all the manufacturers had a hybrid or all-electric car, among them Toyota’s popular Prius and GM’s plug-in hybrid, the Chevrolet Volt, due in 2010.
Yesterday, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said a
California-based company’s plans to set up in Toronto is a recognition that we’re entering a new era of electric cars on the province’s highways.
Better Place, a company from Palo Alto, Calif., will open a Canadian office in Toronto and build an automobile demonstration and education centre there. The company has worldwide plans for recharging stations on highways for electric cars.
McGuinty said the province is solidly behind it, despite being vague about how much money Ontario is prepared to invest to build facilities and encourage manufacturers. He said the government will release a study this spring examining how to speed up the introduction of electric vehicles, which will include incentives for buyers.
But one of the biggest incentives has suddenly disappeared — the high price of gasoline.
Despite demands by lawmakers on both sides of the border that automakers, especially the Detroit Three, must concentrate more on hybrids and fuel efficiency and less on pickup trucks and SUVs, too many motorists will only buy electric or hybrid cars if the price is right.
And the price won’t be right unless gasoline starts soaring again. Automakers are caught in a catch-22. The price of hybrids and electric cars will remain high until motorists buy more of them, and motorists won’t buy them unless the price of gasoline goes higher. Automakers have surely helped with the marketing, but the public clearly wants big vehicles that guzzle gasoline.
The only thing we can be assured of is the price of gasoline will indeed go up. And it will go far higher than we could even have imagined last summer.
So the only thing governments, automakers and motorists can do is to prepare as best we can before it’s too late.
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