There is a lack of buyer interest for electric cars in China

Car makers are realizing that there is lack of buyer interest for electric cars. The analysts have described their feeling that leadership in the manufacture of electric cars is still eluding China. The reasons could be the hurdles China is facing in technological developments and a complete lack of interest among the buyers. Both these factors are scaling back the electric car industry in China. Chinese car makers and their partners are finding that it has become extremely difficult to make an electric car that will be one of the high sellers and be among the leading world models. About three years back, the Chinese car makers had big plans and hoped that they will be able to meet the world demand for greener cars. China has always wanted to become a world power in the manufacture of electric cars. They had kept aside many billions of dollars for research and had budgeted for annual sales of around half a million cars. As of now, Beijing is withdrawing its expectations on account of technological drawbacks and absence of interest among the consumers. So much so, those electric car makers are unable to push sales to even two thousand cars a year and even these two thousand cars will mostly be taxi cabs. The government is also going to intervene by expanding the car industry’s portfolios to lay emphasis on cleaner petrol engines. The government has been continuously changing the targets as the technology has not been developing as quickly as it had expected. Right now, about thirteen thousand electric and alternate energy cars are undergoing tests in over twenty cities in China. This is still a small figure despite the subsidies that have been offered by the government. The most advanced manufacturer of electric cars in china is the BYD Company. Hathaway Corporation of Berkshire has a ten per cent stake in this company. The BYD Company has announced that, like the Western models, its electric E6 sedan can go up to one hundred and ninety miles on a single battery charge. BYD has already sold about three hundred taxi cabs and two hundred electric buses in Shenzhen which is a business hub near Hong Kong. Thousands of engineers are working with the motor battery technology at BYD Company. There are not so many makers of electric cars with reliable production potential. The Chinese government had seen electric cars as the means to cut down the demand for oil imports. They consider this demand as a dangerous threat to them. They are looking to alternate energy car manufacturers to help build China from a low-cost factory investment area to a builder of technology through electric and hybrid cars which will bring in profits and commercial success. Consumers also had become wary and they had been discouraged by reports from the media that batteries in cars made by Chinese and foreign collaborators had caught fire during the test runs. Scarcity of charging stations is also raising anxiety.