Bill Ford Sounds Electric Vehicle Retreat

Or is it a retreat? Bill Ford said at the ECO:nomics conference in Santa Barbara that the Ford Focus Electric is an investment and that 'We still don’t know what the winning technology is going to be…We’re continuing to invest in hydrogen, we’re continuing to invest in biofuels.'

Ford also reminded us that EVs have been tried and failed before:"Prior to the Model T, a third of all vehicles in this country were electric… this isn’t a new technology. The reason it died away was the ubiquity of charging. Today, we have the same issue."

Wall Street Journal reported that Ford has no certainty that there will ever be an electric grid built that can support mass amounts of electric vehicles on the roads. "We’ve made a big bet on electric… but the pace at which that develops, I think anyone who can tell you that is lying."

One of the comments below the posting interpreted Bills' comments to mean that without political support (and the government subsidies) there would be no push for electric vehicles and Ford can't count on that support from Washington to continue.

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/03/bill-ford-sounds-ev-retreat/

The author was needlessly pessimistic. He purports to be some high level former corporate insider, but really this type of 'corporate speak' is nothing more than standard hedging of bets.

Here's more press from glass-half-empty type of people:

Last week Ford president stated that other technologies such as hydrogen and bio fuels. 'We still don't know what the winner will be' he said adding that Ford is working on other technologies besides electric vehicles, and other than the 2012 Ford Focus Electric they have no plans as of yet.

I found this interesting: He said prior to the Model T one third of vehicles where battery powered!

http://www.creditplus.co.uk/used-ca...autious-to-Commit-to-Electric-Cars/998699516/

Maybe Ford is just building the Focus Electric because they've seen how popular the Volt and Nissan Leaf are, not necessarily because they believe it's going to be the future...