EV and Anti-EVolution

Vic Heylen, director of the Flanders Centre for Automotive Research based near Antwerp, Belgium, was quoted recently in the Detroit News. He says the electric engine and car effort has become too big to fail. "Latest sales figures are indeed disastrous. The EV market is dead. There is just no one with the political guts to sign the death certificate," Heylen said.

Western European sales of electric vehicles certainly were horrible, just under 11,000 in the first half of 2012, or 0.15% of all sales.  (Obama's State of the Union Address in 2011 predicted 1 million EV's produced in the U.S. in 2015 but only 11,000 EV's were sold of 13 million cars in the U.S. in 2011.) True, they are twice as expensive as conventional cars, their batteries are huge and take up both space and insurance costs as they are prone to explode (Chevrolet Volt's 16 kWh battery costs around $8,000 today), they have little luggage space, their driving range is very limited and, of course, for these reasons they are nerve-wracking to drive.

Yet they stagger on, despite their poor sales and dangers. But Heylen notes a growing parallel market of advisers and support groups, a nice little growth industry. "During the first three months of 2012 I counted 89 Electric Car Forums and Conferences with very high attendance fees. Prices for reports for forecast, studies etc increased from around 700 euros ($870) to around 3,000 euros ($3,700) today," Heylen said.

Probably run by nonprofits.