2009 LA Auto Show: Lutz Reiterates GM Sees Limited EV Sales Over Next 5 Years
By Scott Doggett December 4, 2009
General Motors has said it before - that the Detroit automaker sees limited sales of electric cars during the next five years - but we were a little surprised when GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz reiterated the sentiment this week.
While field reporters' questions following his keynote speech Wednesday at the Los Angeles Auto Show - one in which he said GM is refocusing on electrically driven vehicles - Lutz said most American consumers will be unwilling to spend the premium of thousands of dollars for a battery-powered vehicles unless gas prices are pushed higher with taxes.
"We're not advocating that, but if it doesn't happen it's going to be very difficult for these technologies," he said.
Repeating statements he's made in times past, Lutz said GM sees limited sales of EVs over the next five years and will ramp up output of its much-anticipated Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid cautiously.
"This is uncharted territory for all of us," Lutz said.
GM unveiled the production version of the Volt at the show. The battery-powered car, set to go on sale at the end of 2010, has become a symbol for the automaker's effort to reinvent itself over the past four years.
Lutz said GM would build 8,000 to 10,000 Volt models during the first full year of production with an eventual ramp up to production of 50,000 to 60,000 vehicles.
GM has said it expects to price the Volt near $40,000 before a $7,500 tax credit for U.S. consumers, but the automaker does not expect to make money on early sales.
GM spokesmen said Wednesday the company would offer the first Volt models for sale in California, a step that would signal its return to a market it was criticized for abandoning earlier this decade.
GM famously scrapped an earlier experiment with an electric car marketed in California as the EV1, an unpopular decision that made it the target of criticism and the star of the 2006 documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?"
Lutz said he believed that the auto industry was near a historic shift away from traditional combustion engines and toward battery-powered vehicles that would be "as momentous as the shift from horses to horsepower."
But when asked, Lutz also said that the total market for rechargeable vehicles by 2015 might only be 250,000 to 300,000 vehicles of annual sales.
That would be about 3 percent of industry-wide U.S. auto sales in 2010 and about on par with the current market share for traditional gasoline-electric hybrids led by the Toyota Prius.
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