HIGH PUMP PRICES DRIVE EV BUYING

Electric-Drive Vehicle Demand Recharged by Gas Prices
Keith Naughton and Alan Ohnsman, April 4, 2012 (Bloomberg BusinessWeek)

"Just when it looked like electric cars were running out of juice, the return of $4 a gallon gasoline is generating new life for battery-powered vehicles…Electric-drive vehicles, including hybrids, plug-in models and pure battery-powered cars, were the fastest-growing segment in the U.S. auto market in the first quarter…Sales of those models rose 49 percent to 117,182 vehicles in the first quarter, from 78,527 a year earlier before Japan’s earthquake and tsunami pinched output.

"Electric cars and hybrids are surging in tandem with gasoline prices, which averaged $3.93 a gallon on April 3, approaching the July 2008 peak of $4.11…Toyota Motor Corp. (7203)’s Prius hybrid and General Motors Co. (GM) (GM)’s Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid electric car each had record sales in March. Nissan Motor Co. Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn repeated he’s ‘bullish’ that pure electric cars will capture 10 percent of the market by 2020…"

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"Sales of the Nissan Leaf electric car will take off in August when Nissan begins producing it in the U.S., boosting output and possibly lowering prices, Ghosn said…Ghosn’s view of one in 10 cars being electric by 2020 isn’t widely shared. LMC Automotive predicts 2 percent of cars in the U.S. will be electric by 2020. Add in gasoline-electric hybrids and plug-ins and the…forecast rises to 9.2 percent…

"Rising sales last month spurred GM to restart Volt production one week earlier than planned. GM sold 2,289 Volts in March, a record monthly total for the car. The previous high was 1,529 deliveries in December…[GM] wants to raise monthly Volt sales to 3,000 or more in the coming months…Such vehicles…[may be] less- attractive option for people who live in urban areas, with limited access to garages where they can recharge their cars at night, he said…[and some consumers] are not ready to embrace all-electric vehicles because of concerns about how long the battery will last and how far the car can go before recharging for hours…[but Ghosn insists the electric vehicle] is the car of the future…"