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Electric Smart cars head to Denmark
October 30, 2008 - by Emma Ritch, Cleantech Group
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Mercedes-Benz is planning to sell electric Smart cars in Denmark, the government reported today.
Mercedes-Benz, a division of Stuttgart, Germany's Daimler (NYSE: DAI), is planning to join a long line of automakers responding to the government's energy policy, which exempts electric cars from taxes until at least 2012.
In March, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Project Better Place announced a deal to work with DONG Energy and the Renault Nissan Alliance to bring electric vehicles to Denmark—the project's second market after Israel (see Project Better Place goes to Denmark).
Sweden's Saab and Volvo, France's Aixam, San Carlos, Calif.-based Tesla Motors and China's BYD have all announced plans to enter the Danish market with electric or hybrid electric cars.
Mercedes plans to begin producing plug-in electric versions of the Smart car at the end of 2009, but versions with engines that run on petrol and diesel are currently available in Denmark. It's unclear when the electric Smart would be sold in Denmark.
Daimler has teaming up with Essen-based utility RWE (OTC:RWEOY) on a pilot project in Berlin that's testing 100 electric Smart cars on the road and a network of 500 charging stations (see Berlin to charge up Smart cars). An additional pilot is underway in London with Smart Fortwo electric cars being used by corporate groups and municipal authorities, including the London Police.
Elsewhere in Europe, the Renault Nissan Alliance has said it plans to sell electric cars in France and Portugal starting in 2011 (see Renault-Nissan, EDF in electric car partnership and Renault Nissan to bring electric cars to Portugal). The Renault Nissan Alliance, formed in 1999 by France's Renault and Japan's Nissan Motor (Nasdaq: NSANY), is the fourth largest automotive group in the world by sales volume.
Renault Nissan and Project Better Place are working to build a network of 500,000 charging stations across Israel (see Electric cars are coming to Israel). Project Better place has said it's targeting geographically small areas where it's easier to set up charging networks.
Copyright © 2008 Cleantech Group LLC. All rights reserved, including right of redistribution.
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Comments
Still to slow
Submitted on October 31st, 2008 by forever4now (not verified)Relative to India and China, the big western and Japanese car companies are dragging their feet when it comes to full commercialization of electric cars and they are going to end up losing the whole market. Companies like Tata and Ajanta in India and BYD in China are close to mass production of low cost electric vehicles NOW. Having a full charging infrastructure in place is ideal but not mandatory. Many people in California and other places already have electric cars and NEVs and are able to make them fit in to their lifestyle just fine as a commuter car, etc. The more electric vehicles there are on the road, the faster the infrastructure will develop. All you need is a company like Walmart to start deploying charging stations at all their stores to cover half the US.
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