Electric vehicles may become a new growing point for the American automotive industry. After the US Congress had resolved to consider the issue of allocation of $13 billion in order to rescue the US motor industry, the major companies of the industry decided to stake at manufacturing vehicles operating on an alternative fuel.
In particular, representatives of Detroit’s Big Three (Ford, General Motors, Chrysler) directed their eyes to vehicles on an electric or combined (gasoline and electric) drive.
The economic recession imparted additional charm to these developments. The bookends of the US motor vehicle industry intend to reorient their production to output these particular cost-efficient cars in the nearest future.
As of today, electric batteries look more appealing than other clean technologies, e.g., hydrogenic ones. It is assumed that the new generation of electric vehicles will be on free sale in the USA in the next year, although the demand for them will be restrained because of absence of the maintenance stations network for recharging batteries.
Chrysler is the most optimistic of the three companies; its analysts forecast increasing of electric vehicles sales up to 100,000 in 2013. General Motors, for its part, claims that it will be able to increase output up to 60,000 a year, starting from 2010, after the first vehicle of the new generation rolls off the production line. The company presented a new model, Chevrolet Volt, a hybrid equipped with an electric battery and a gasoline three-cylinder engine, at the exhibition currently taking place in Detroit. The vehicle will be able of going 64 kilometers using only batteries without recharge.
Contemporary electric vehicles cover the distance of 60 km a day which is, of course, not so bad for an urban vehicle but is not enough for long-distance trips. Some companies are already conducting research in this direction. For example, Project Better Place was conceived to develop a network of stations carrying out recharge of lithium phosphate batteries. They are currently undergoing tests at two models: Renault Megane and Nissan Rogue.
“It will be the cheapest of all existent systems. The cost of gasoline in the internal combustion engines is 78 cents for one mile of travel, and you will only pay 32 cents for one mile of electric vehicle travel”, Shai Agassi, CEO of Better Place headquartered in California, says.
“Moreover, in cooperation with our strategic partners, we could create a network of recharge stations which would function in the same way as gasoline stations do now. It will be simple and cheap to change batteries. It is the system of the future”, Agassi says.
