ELECTRIC CARS will not decrease in price for “some years”, according to Audi’s senior executive in charge of alternative energy development, Frank Van Meel.
Mr Van Meel told The Irish Times that the cost of ownership of electric cars and their components would come down but it would not happen in the near future. He said the pace of change for all alternative energy motoring projects was slow because so many factors came into play, such as the ease of charging electric batteries, infrastructure, and social and political considerations.
Every country had different considerations and for that reason car companies had to be ready with several solutions to alternative energy sources, he said. “America is now moving towards diesel, while China is still a petrol-consuming economy. There are different issues in different parts of the world when it comes to issues like emission, noise, and oil imports,” he added.
He was speaking after Audi released details of several projects it is working on, including a new charging system for electric vehicles. Audi is working on fitting charging plates into the ground below parking spaces, so that an adapted electric car can simply drive into a space in a purpose-built car park and be charged automatically.
Audi says the system can go into series production “within a few years” and it has the potential to allow electric motoring to take a “big step forward”.
Range anxiety for electric cars is being urgently addressed by Audi and other companies. The chairman of the company’s board of management, Rupert Stadler, says a range of 150 kilometres is simply not enough and has pledged to double battery capacity by 2020.
The Q5 hybrid will be the first hybrid in production and should be on sale in Europe by the summer. However, hybrid technology will be only one part of the equation for Audi.
Frank Van Meel says there is no “silver bullet technology” and all concepts have to be developed but Mr Stadler also says electricity represents the mobility of the future. It remains to be seen what the eventual solution will be and to what extent it will rely on hybrid technology.
In the meantime, due to growth in China, India and other emerging economies, Audi and its parent company, VAG, have been recording huge profits. Audi, for example, delivered 1.3 million cars last year with an average profit per car of some €3,000.
Its bigger cars and SUVs have also sold very well in the United States, where diesel versions of bigger cars are now seen as more environmentally friendly. But more cars are sold in China than anywhere else.
Last year Audi sold 313,000 cars in China, an increase of more than 37 per cent over 2010, and it set a new sales record in America every month for the past year.
The Volkswagen group increased sales revenue by 25 per cent to almost €160 billion, with operating profit up by over half to €11.3 billion.