Does the automotive industry really believe in electric cars?
A good article in TechCrunch, “Automakers aren’t really advertising electric vehicles”, puts its finger on the true problem facing electric vehicles: the automotive industry is still dominated by petrolheads and has no interest in selling them.
The data speaks for itself: in the United States, the number of electric vehicles sold up to the end of November amount to a meager 133,854 out of total light vehicle sales of nearly 16 million. In Spain, the figure is 1,671 units out of a total 1,050,121 vehicles. The best-selling electric vehicle in the United States, the Tesla Model S, sold 23,571 units. Spain’s most popular, the Nissan Leaf, shifted 493 units. In the world, just 584,393 electric vehicles have been sold over the course of 2016.
The news is hardly surprising: we already know that electric vehicle sales are low: fourteen months of growth that have seen sales grow by more than a third over the previous year amount to little in the context of the low starting point.
But what makes the TechCrunch article interesting is the real reason why electric cars remain unpopular: the big brands don’t bother advertising them. The vast majority of car manufacturers, with few exceptions, devote their advertising budgets to pushing their gasoline or diesel vehicles, relegating electric cars to the…
