Do You Think Americans are Ready to Drive Electric Cars?
For decades car manufacturers have always tried to find out what type of cars Americans would enjoy driving. Car manufacturers have always assumed that Americans loved driving those big trucks and large SUVs because they were in high demand. However that was never the case according to a new report by market survey released by Pike Research. The objective of this report was to find out for sure what the average American wanted to drive.
Pike used a survey technique which equally represented every demographic. They polled more than 1,000 potential auto purchasers in a survey which was demographically balanced and discovered that 48% of Americans were very interested in purchase the new plug-in hybrid electrical vehicles also called PHEV that has a 40 mile range.
According to Pike’s prediction there are going to be well over 600,000 PHEVs sold in the United States alone by 2015 followed by their introduction into the market by 2010. According to Clint Wheelock who is the managing director of Pike the new plug-in hybrids match perfectly the requirements of most people which were surveyed as eighty two percent of the people that responded said that they drive less than 40 miles a day which an average distance of around 27 miles. This is a very interesting finding as many auto manufacturers even those that manufacture these new hybrid cars assume that people will want to drive longer distances and so there has always been pressure on developers who have tried to increase the mileage of the car.
Other findings of the Pike survey:
- Around 65% of the Respondents in the survey expressed their will to pay a high price for these new PHEVs well above the price of the average and standard gasoline car, this would be an average premium of around 12% – Many consumers also indicated that the easy availability of the workplace, public and private charging of vehicles in both local and outside of their areas were very important factors which would influence their purchase.
- The Survey also found that more than 79% of these people who were interested in hybrid cars would also be interested in investing in a quick charging outlet at their residence. However the price of this outlet would be a huge factor which would dictate demand. Now the question is that if the world is turning towards PHEVs as their primary vehicle will Americans want to stick with their regular in demand vehicles such as SUVs? The survey found apparently that is not the case. According to Pike’s survey while the US might probably be the largest market of these hybrid vehicles in the world the next five years will see an increase in sales of smaller vehicles as opposed to larger vehicles such as SUVs which will just sell at around 10% as compared to 80% for small vehicles.
See Related Report: Commercialization of Alternative Fuel Vehicles
