Electric vehicles decline in Atlanta and gas prices at historic lows
Electric Vehicles Decline in ATL and Gas prices at historic lows – Any impacts on the global acceptance and market penetration??
Over the course of the last year we witnessed a steady fall in gas prices and according to AAA, they dropped to a national average of $2.6 . Lets see what is the impact of this fall on the electric cars market, and if it causes a serious decline in sells, as one will assume.
Before the gas prices started dropping, the electric car manufacturers came out with discounts in a successful attempt to bust sales. According to Ward’s AutoInfoBank, this attempt increased the sales by 35 percent but an additional factor of it was the appearance of the new Electric Kia Soul, Mercedes B Class and the BMV i3. And we have to keep in mind that this was before the fall in the gas prices.
The general assumption is that when gas prices are high, consumers will tend to buy electronic vehicles and when gas prices are down, this situation will reverse, regardless the fact that electronic cars are much more expensive then their gas counterparts.
This assumption is validated by John Krafcik, the former CEO of Hyundai Motor America and current president of the car-buying website TrueCar.com , as he explaines to NPR, “During months when gas prices are low, less fuel-efficient cars tend to take a greater share of the market and vice versa. It’s a fairly one-to-one relationship.”
On the other hand, when examining the statistical numbers of actual sells as pointed out in Los Angeles Times, Electronic Vehicles sales in January 2015 were 3 percent up compared to 2014 when the gas prices were much higher. The sells of Nissan-Leaf plug-in remained high and hit a record high even when gas prices were at the lowest. Based on this information, there are some who will state that there is no correlation between electric-vehicle sales and gas prices.
Sources:
http://insideevs.com/gas-prices-hybrid-sales-drop-electric-car-sales-rise/
http://phys.org/news/2015-01-gas-prices-incentives-math-electric.html