Green is Good: Honda executive disses EVs

While one of his company's main rivals is betting the farm on electric-vehicles, Honda’s R&D boss over in Japan isn’t as confident that EVs are the driving panacea others are counting on.

“We lack confidence” in the electric-vehicle business, said Tomohiko Kawanabe, president of Honda’s research and development unit. “It’s questionable whether consumers will accept the annoyances of limited driving range and having to spend time charging them.”

Compare that to Nissan head Carlos Ghosn’s take on EVs. The Japanese auotmaker's Leaf EV goes on sale in Japan and the U.S. later this year. Ghosn speculates EVs will make up 10 per cent of the global car market within the next ten years.

BTW, Advanced Automotive Batteries, a consulting firm based in Oregon House, California, thinks EVs will amount to no more than 1 per cent of the global market by 2020,

Honda stopped selling EVs ten years. But its is planning on selling them again in the U.S., chiefly to help meet California emission rules.

“We are definitely conducting research on electric cars, but I can’t say I can wholeheartedly recommend them,” said Kawanabe said in a Bloomberg report. Instead, Honda is still pushing hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicles like its Clarity FCX.

So who do think is right?

Nissan and its enthusiasm for EVs?

Or Honda and its hydrogen car hopes?

[Source: Bloomberg]