Honda Halts Electric Car Production
Thursday, 29 April 1999
L O S A N G E L E S (AP)
HONDA WILL stop building electric cars, writing them off in their
infancy as expensive, inconvenient and unpopular flops.
While environmentalists criticized the move Thursday, it may be
indicative of the auto industry's movement away from pure electric
cars and toward hybrids that use other low-emission technology such
as fuel cells.
"If we were making money on the cars it would be a different story,
but these are not moneymakers," American Honda Co. spokesman
Art Garner said Thursday in Torrance, Calif. "Given the current
technology, we have no plans to build them in the future."
Toyota, General Motors, Ford, DaimlerChysler and Nissan all say
they will continue to produce battery-powered cars, but will pursue
the development of other technologies as a possible alternative.
Many automakers have focused on developing hybrid engines that
run on fuel cells, which produce electricity through the low-emission
chemical reaction of hydrogen and oxygen.
Environmentalists said Honda has prematurely abandoned the
battery technology, which is designed to help rid car exhaust from
high-population areas. The Honda cars were introduced in May 1997.
"This project is still taking baby steps," said Richard Varenchik,
spokesman for California Air Resources Board. "We're very unhappy
with this. If the technology is not ready yet, you don't get there by
stopping. You continue to refine the product."
The project is of particular importance in California, which at 18
million cars has the nation's most automobiles.
Pure electric cars satisfy the state's stringent air quality rules, which
mandate that, starting in 2003, fully 6 percent of all new cars sold by
top automakers must be low-emission vehicles.
California has an additional 2003 requirement that 4 percent of all
new vehicles produce zero-emissions.
Only electric cars, which emit no smoke at all, satisfy that
requirement.
Hybrid cars, though they don't meet the 4 percent requirement, do
produce less emissions than conventional cars and may better satisfy
the needs of motorists, said Christopher Cedergren, an analyst with
Nextrend, a marketing and research firm in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
"Frankly, electric cars were just not consumer friendly," he said.
"They were too expensive to buy ... and barely got people to and
from work. People won't pay to be inconvenienced."
Few electric vehicles can travel more than 75 miles before needing
to be recharged. A battery pack adds hundreds of pounds to a car
and costs thousands of dollars to replace.
In addition, most manufacturers only lease the pure electric cars, a
way to regulate new technology. Costs to lease the EVs are high - the
average monthly payment is about $450 a month.
Honda has leased about 300 of its EV Plus cars in California. Garner,
the company spokesman, said it has struggled to distribute them.
Some analysts have decried California's smog restrictions, saying
technology is not advanced enough to meet them.
The state is "mandating technology that isn't there yet," said
Cedergren, the analyst.
"If automakers could make a car that runs on nothing, they would," he
said. "With gasoline prices (so high), the oil companies are no friends
to the automotive industry."
Jack Keebler, the Detroit editor of Motor Trend magazine, said
environmentalists have blindly latched on to the idea that electric
engines are the only solution to pollution. Other alternatives like fuel
cells might prove more practical and nearly as effective.
"The point is to clean the air, not make electric cars," he said.
Honda is developing a prototype of a zero-emission gasoline engine,
but it is uncertain whether it will be ready by 2003, Garner said. |
