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European Automakers Say ‘Psychological’ Barriers of Fueling Electric Cars Can Be Overcome
Development of a public network of recharging points will be critical to the public’s acceptance of a mass rollout of pure electric vehicles despite evidence that such networks are not actually needed, according to automakers Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan Motor Co. Ltd.
With Nissan poised to start commercial marketing of its Leaf pure electric family car and Toyota road-testing its plug-in Prius hybrid, with a rollout planned for 2012, countries around the world are beginning to work on expensive public urban recharging networks.
“For electric vehicles, recharging infrastructure is essential in a way that it is not for plug-in hybrids, despite the fact that we all know that in most cases — where they can — people will recharge at home overnight,” Graham Smith, managing director of Toyota Motor Europe’s London office, told ClimateWire.
“We know there is consumer resistance to buying an electric vehicle in the absence of public recharging points,” he said. “There are many, many issues such as standardization of the charging infrastructure — whether it is AC or DC [alternating current or direct current] — and others that are in play in the U.K., Europe and globally. But we can’t see it as dramatically insurmountable to develop this infrastructure.”
In the United States, where states and cities have begun to install charging stations, engineers call the fear of running out of juice “range anxiety.” In Europe, where distances to be traveled are generally shorter, it is being described as a psychological barrier, but one that can be crossed.
If public recharging networks aren’t available, the plug-in hybrid has an edge over the pure electric vehicle because it contains both an internal combustion engine and an electric one and can use either or both at the same time.
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