Electric Cars Slow to Take Off

Electric cars have a lot of buzz lately. President Obama made them a focal point of his 2011 State of the Union speech. Motor Trend magazine named the Chevy Volt its 2011 Car of the Year. General Motors chose to run a high-profile commercial for the Volt during the 2011 Super Bowl.

But the hype surrounding plug-in cars doesn't match the reality on the ground. The roll-out of these high-efficiency cars has been very slow to date. So far, just a few hundred of the electric car models have actually been delivered to customers. Nissan, for instance, told the Financial Times it has only delivered about 100 of its new Nissan Leaf plug-in electric cars to consumers.

Last summer, Nissan announced that the Leaf would be rolled out in five states in 2010, with two more states added in January 2011. The revelation about the slow pace at which the cars have been delivered across those seven states so far is a surprise to some, although Nissan says it is not concerned.

"The launch has been a deliberately slow one. We wanted to focus not just on the quality of the product but also the quality of the experience," Brian Carolin, the senior vice president of sales and marketing for Nissan North America told the Wall Street Journal.

However, at the recent National Auto Dealers Association convention, Carolin admitted for the first time that Nissan will likely not reach its highly-touted goal of delivering 20,000 Leafs to customers by September.

"I think 20,000 will be too high," Carolin said. "You just have to make this launch absolutely perfect. It's not a numbers game."

Distribution of the Chevy Volt, meanwhile, has been somewhat more widespread. But GM recently revealed that it has delivered fewer than 650 of the cars to consumers across the country. Still, the company maintains its initial projections of 10,000 Volts on the road by the end of 2011.

"We're accelerating our launch plan to have Volts in all participating Chevrolet dealerships in every single state in the union by the end of this year," says Rick Scheidt, U.S. vice president, Chevrolet Marketing. "This is the right thing to do for our customers and our dealers who are seeing increased traffic onto their showroom floors."

A newly-released report from the consulting company Accenture pointed to a number of problems in the acceptance of electric cars in the United States, and pointed to particular issues related to public charging stations. Those stations, the report concluded, have so far not been used enough to recoup the cost for their purchase and installation.

Still, many remain bullish on the future of electric cars on American roads.

"Green vehicles represent the vanguard of automotive innovation, but they have to be economical for consumers and profitable for manufacturers," says Congressman Sandy Levin, who represents the country's car capital of Michigan.