Buyers having a hard time seeing the value in EVs

By John LeBlanc How does that saying go? You can lead a new car buyer to electric vehicles but you can’t make them buy? That seems to be the case with many government-mandated electric cars in the U.S., where demand is not keeping up with the quotas automakers have been forced to adhere to. A recent example is the plug-in version of the Toyota Prius gas-electric hybrid. Unlike the more popular, non-plug-in Prius, the plug-in version is a hard sell. While the car is priced at $35,700 Canadian, in the U.S., Toyota is dropping the MSRP for new 2014 Prius Plug-In Hybrid models to $29,990 U.S., a $2,010 reduction. Toyota admits the price drop is to help juice sales and meet California’s Zero-Emission Vehicle legislation. The automaker is the state’s biggest seller, and therefore must also sell the most low-polluting models. Toyota said it sold 12,750 copies of the Prius plug-ins in the U.S. in 2012, below the forecasted 15,000. Sales through the end of September came to 7,974. Of course, the Prius plug-in isn’t the only electrified car that’s having a hard time finding buyers. Toyota was already offering low lease and loan deals for its Canadian-made, U.S.-market RAV4 electric-vehicle to jumpstart slow sales, while Honda, Nissan and General Motors have also used purchase incentives to move their respective EVs. But even incentives don’t seem to be working. In a U.S. new vehicle market that has seen a rise of 10 per cent in sales after eight months, to 10.6 million new cars and trucks sold, only 67,000 vehicles were plug-ins, with GM's Chevrolet Volt leading the way with 16,760 units sold, followed by Nissan's pure-electric Leaf at at 16,076. (EV sales in Canada are proportionally slower. Toyota doesn't separate its Prius plug-in sales figures, but only 382 Leafs and 656 Volts have been sold here through the end of September). So while governments demand and subsidies them, and automakers unwillingly build them, the general buying public is still reluctant to jump on the EV bandwagon. What do you readers think? Should governments mandate a product no one seems to be interested in? Or is this type of government leadership the only way to get new car buyers out of their fossil-fuel-only vehicles? Source: Automotive News via Bloomberg

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