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German carmakers jump on environmental wagon

“Germans always have the most elegant solution, but one which takes 20 years to bring to fruition.” — Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, German automotive expert

Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW — all of Germany’s biggest car makers now want to launch electric cars, getting on the environmentally friendly bandwagon after lagging behind their peers.

Specialists in high-end, mostly high emission automobiles, German companies have built a reputation for making exciting cars but ones that are heavy polluters and consume a lot of fuel.

That branding has become a liability as oil prices climb ever higher and environmental regulations are tightened amid growing fears about global warming.

After Daimler and VW, which want to roll out electric models in 2010, BMW said last week it would begin to test several hundred electric models of its Mini brand.

BMW did not say when it planned to sell such vehicles nor did it indicate if the BMW brand would also offer an electric car.

“It remains completely open,” a company spokesman said.

As for hybrid cars that use a traditional gasoline engine combined with an electric motor, they should arrive “at the end of next year,” he said.

VW boss Martin Winterkorn has said repeatedly that “the future belongs to the electric car.”

As to whether such declarations are a sign the major car makers are ready for a serious change in strategy, German expert Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer said: “It’s important but there is also a bit of marketing mixed in.”

Sector players agree that no large-scale series of electric cars will hit the streets in the next several years.

One analyst said “10 to 20 years,” while Bjoern Eberleh, who works at the research group Akasol, said: “No earlier than 2012.”

Renault of France has vowed to be the first with a full-scale rollout and is aiming for several European countries in 2011.

“The Germans are behind,” Eberleh said. “They have earned a lot of money for a long time with their powerful cars. They were very happy with the situation.”

Motors used either gasoline or diesel because German manufacturers “were opposed to hybrids, Toyota has a five-year lead,” Dudenhoeffer said.

He also pointed to a psychological factor.

“Germans are engineers. As opposed to France, they do not know how to make do with what they have. With hybrids, they estimated it was not the best system, with two motors, a battery and a fuel tank,” Dudenheffer said. “Germans always have the most elegant solution, but one which takes 20 years to bring to fruition.”

BMW has invested in research on hydrogen fuel cells but “the infrastructure does not exist yet,” its spokesman acknowledged, in particular service stations.

And while the group refuses to announce it would give up on the technology, its spokesman estimated it still would require “around 20 years.”

Eberleh noted that Germans also had a relationship with their automobiles which meant that “for many, it is a question of image, they tend to their cars and they have to be powerful ... but that is changing.”

Like motorists almost everywhere in the world, Germans have seen the price at the pump leap and know that higher taxes on the most polluting vehicles are coming.

“Hybrids and electric vehicles are going to be profitable, everyone is getting quickly into the act,” Dudenhoeffer said, projecting that by 2025, all cars sold in Europe would be either hybrids or electric.
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