Daimler CEO pushing for government to offer incentives to EV buyers
Daimler AG’s CEO Dieter Zetsche is pushing for the governments to offer consumers invectives to purchase electric-vehicles to help offset the extra cost for manufacturers to build expensive EVs.
“Even in the best case, the cost of electric autos might run several thousand euros more than conventional vehicles for the foreseeable future,” Zetsche said. “In other words, we need appropriate sales incentives.”
Zetsche said that electric-vehicle manufacturers will struggle to profit from electric-vehicles, which is likely to account for less than 10 percent of the cars on the roads in 10 years. He said that the grown of the electric segment will occur “in many small steps.”
“We won’t earn high returns from electric vehicles for years to come,” said Zetsche. “That is the optimistic way of putting it.”
Daimler AG has plans to bring a limited production Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG E-Cell to the market by 2012. That will be followed by a two-seater Smart city electric-car. The group has plans to produce more than 10,000 electric-cars by 2012 and is building a factory in eastern Germany to produce lithium-ion power packs.
Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG E-CELL:
– By: Omar Rana
Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required)
