Nissan Exec Recounts Top German Auto Engineer Claiming EVs “Doomed To Fail” & Consumers “Didn’t Want Or Need Them”
It’s not any sort of news that the top German auto manufacturers have been slow to embrace electric vehicles — well, basically all major auto manufacturers have been.
As we know quite well now, the German manufacturers have largely opted to spend the last decade promoting diesel cars instead (and all that they entail), through legal means and otherwise.
What is newsworthy, though, is the recent recounting by a Nissan exec of an experience a couple of several years back — in this experience, an engineer at a top German auto manufacturer “poured a huge amount of scorn on electrification.”
Sounds promising, right? A look behind the veil.
I always wondered what the execs of companies such as Volkswagen and BMW have to say about Tesla when behind closed doors. I bet the language is quite colorful, and full of lazy generalizations and excuse making.
For now, though, we’ll have to settle for the comments below, just concerning electric vehicles in general. The comments come from a conversation that Nissan Europe Chairman Paul Willcox (pictured above) recently had with Automotive News in Barcelona. Enjoy:
“Seven or eight years ago I attended a conference in the UK and an engineer from a very well-known German group was pouring a huge amount of scorn on electrification. (He was) basically saying, ‘Consumers don’t want it. Consumers don’t need it. The technology has no durability and therefore it’s doomed to fail.'”
Presumably, the comments came from a Volkswagen exec … going on a hunch and nothing else. As a bit of speculation, is it fair to theorize that Volkswagen execs are (seemingly) more arrogant than those of BMW or Daimler because of their closer ties to the government in Germany? That would figure, wouldn’t it?
But Volkswagen hasn’t been the only major auto company that has trailed Nissan and failed society in its EV hesitation or obstructionism. Anti-EV efforts and talk have been the norm. Following the launch of the Nissan Leaf, Nissan apparently got a lot of flack behind the scenes from others in the industry.
Notably, Willcox stated that things have been clearly changing as of late. “Now at motor shows everyone’s got a concept car with a blue lead coming out of it or they’re announcing 100 electric vehicles will be coming in the next three years or something like that. So the world has changed.”
Here are a few such examples of recently unveiled EVs from other automakers:
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