Blog

Obama’s State of the Union Address in 2011 set the goal for plug in electric cars to be one million travelling the United States roads by 2015.

Now that 2015 is here, what is the current status of the electric cars in US roads?

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz says, ‘not quite.’

Reaching the target is not going to be accomplished until after a few years yet. This was confirmed by Moniz in his interview with The Detroit News, during the Washington Auto Show.

Sales for the battery electric and plug in hybrid vehicles increased in 2014.

The exact number is 119,000, but this is a very small percentage to the 16.4 million new cars that were sold in the country last year. This simply means the bigger percentage of cars sold are not electric cars.

It was last year that the sales reached 100,000 units since electric cars arrived at the market last December of 2010. Since then, the number increased to 280,000…which means the gap to reach one million is still quite big.

This is not surprising, according to analysts.

Since the official announcement by Obama last 2011, analysts feel that this number is too far reaching. Then again, the drive and energy to keep pushing electric cars to potential consumers is on-going and incessant.

In fact, Moniz said so during the interview that the Department of Energy will be awarding $56 million grants to research projects that would aim to help in reducing cost. Importantly, grants would be given to those that can make efficiency better for plug in electric cars. There are also current projects that focus on getting the most out of alternative fuel as well as internal combustion, hopefully improving efficiency for vehicles.

Another project that the government is creating is the $12 billion loan with low interest that would come from the $25 billion ATVM, Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing, project. Loans in the past went to Ford, Nissan,  and Tesla.

Nissan got the funding for its EcoBoost engines and the Leaf electric car.

The good thing about Obama administration is the continuous offer to entice car manufacturers incentives to keep making electric cars.  In fact, for 2017 to 2025, stricter requirements for fuel efficiency vehicles are implemented.

At the Washington Auto Show, car makers Volkswagen and BMW announced that they would work together with ChargePoint in building around a hundred DC fast charging stations using the CCS, combined charging standard,  protocol. This is definitely another boost to potential customers to push them to buy electric cars. With an added benefit of not having to pay for charging their e-cars, the fact that there would be several DC charging stations will definitely be a good persuasion.

This announcement made by BMW and Volkswagen is the first step to a wide ranging and complete network for CCS.  More importantly, this type of protocol charging would be used not just in the US, but also for Germany car makers.  This is to create a good and healthy competition for the CHAdeMO network that carries Nissan and Tesla electric cars.