Range Is All the Rage in Paris, as Electric Cars Steal the Show

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PARIS — For perhaps the first time at a major international auto salon, the stars of the Paris Motor Show are electric cars.

The 2016 show, open to the public through Oct. 16, also has the usual sampling of futuristic designs and prototypes. And of course there are some conventional new models soon to hit dealer showrooms.

But this show may end up being best remembered as a tipping point for an electric car revolution poised to challenge the automobile industry’s internal-combustion status quo — although some of the excitement is still speculative, of course.

Volkswagen, trying to move beyond the diesel-emissions cheating scandal that has tarnished its brand, is displaying an all-electric concept car it calls the I.D.

VW already sells the all-electric e-Golf, but its limited range between charges is a big drawback. The e-Golf is considered a “city electric” for short commutes, not a long-distance road warrior.

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But at next month’s Los Angeles Auto Show, Volkswagen plans to introduce a new e-Golf, with a range the company says exceeds 124 miles, measured using the Environmental Protection Agency’s test protocols.

Photo

Karl-Thomas Neumann, chief of Opel, with the brand’s new Ampera-e electric car. G.M., which owns Opel, says the Ampera-e has a range of over 300 miles on a single charge. Credit Christophe Ena/Associated Press
The new e-Golf, to be sold in more locations than the current model, will serve as a “bridge vehicle,” the company says, to the new all-electric based on the I.D., whose debut is planned for 2020. Volkswagen says it will have an electric self-driving car by 2025, which is why the I.D. on display here features a steering wheel that retracts into the dashboard when the car is in autonomous mode.

Mercedes-Benz used the Paris show to announce a new subbrand of electric cars, Generation EQ (a play on I.Q.). The vehicles are scheduled to roll out in stages over the next three to seven years. The inaugural model, on display here, is a sport utility vehicle.

Almost every other manufacturer in attendance is offering at least one new model with full electric operation or a hybrid combination of gas and electric.

Exhibit A came from the Opel division of General Motors, which unveiled the production-ready Ampera-e — the European version of its all-electric Chevrolet Bolt, which is supposed to go on sale late this year in North America.

The five-passenger subcompact Ampera-e promised the trifecta of electric car must-haves: considerable utility for a car its size, a mass-market price and an all-electric range of more than 500 kilometers, or 310 miles. (The Chevrolet version has a stated range of 238 miles, based on E.P.A. standards, which are tougher than their European counterparts.)

Six years ago, when the Nissan Leaf, the industry’s first mass-produced electric vehicle, went on sale, the company said its range was less than 100 miles. That proved to be a deal breaker for many buyers, who viewed it as insufficient for everyday driving. Technical tweaks to newer models of the Leaf have lifted that slightly above 100 miles. But new hardware that might significantly expand its range is still awaiting introduction.

Four years ago, Tesla pulled ahead as the new standard-bearer, with electric cars that could go up to 265 miles on a charge. The company said here that its new Model S P100D was rated at 315 miles. But its $135,000 price puts the car well out of the reach of mainstream buyers.

The electric autonomous-driving Renault Trezor concept car on display in Paris. Renault said that future production models based on the Trezor, which has a red cockpit, would appear only after 2020. Credit Benoit Tessier/Reuters
Tesla’s long-promised, lower-price Model 3, which is to sell for $35,000 to $42,000 and is heavily subscribed with advance orders, is still only in prototype form and will not be available until late next year, at the earliest. Tesla did not display a production-ready Model 3 here, to the vocal disappointment of some attendees.

Extending an electric car’s range has been G.M.’s goal since the demise of its ill-fated EV1, which it produced from 1996 to 1999. The EV1 had a range of barely 100 miles.

But G.M. claims to have solved the problem. As evidence, the company announced here that its engineers had driven the Ampera-e 417 kilometers, or 260 miles, from London to the Paris show via the Channel Tunnel.

“When we arrived, we still had a further 80 kilometers of range left,” said Pam Fletcher, the project’s executive chief engineer. “That is substantially more than we just announced for this car two weeks ago.”

While she did not detail the exact methodology, route or road conditions of that drive, “any careful driver, on a national road, could have driven this car 500 kilometers,” Ms. Fletcher said. “We are presenting a real production car, not something that is two to three years away.”

The Ampera-e’s price was not announced here. But its nearly identical cousin in America, the Chevrolet Bolt, has a base price of $37,495. And a range of possible tax credits and incentives offered in the United States could lower the final cost by more than $7,000.

“I’m impressed,” Chris Paine, writer and director of the 2006 documentary film “Who Killed the Electric Car?” wrote in an email about the Ampera-e. “The real question is when it will hit showrooms for us to drive, or have Lyft pick us up in one.”

Dieter Zetsche, chairman of Daimler, Mercedes-Benz’s parent company, presented the brand’s new Generation EQ electric vehicles, which are scheduled to appear in stages over the next three to seven years. Credit Ian Langsdon/European Pressphoto Agency
The Ampera-e will go on sale in Europe next spring, the company said.

Another Paris debutant was a next-generation Renault Zoe EV, with a projected range of 400 kilometers, or 248 miles.

But the Zoe, the first generation of which made its debut in 2012, has been offered for about $27,000 without a battery, less expensive than the Bolt. Buyers then lease a battery pack from the manufacturer for about $100 a month. Renault said the new Zoe would probably have a battery purchase option.

The sexiest concept model at the show is probably the Renault Trezor autonomous-driving electric car. This aircraftlike flight of design fancy is likely never to see production — especially its cornea-scorching red plexiglas cockpit. Renault said future production models based on the Trezor would appear only “beyond 2020.”

Mercedes-Benz built the largest stage here and rigged it for a huge light show with pulsating sound to introduce its Generation EQ vehicles. “We’re now flipping the switch,” said Dieter Zetsche, chairman of Daimler, Mercedes-Benz’s parent company. “We’re ready for the launch of an electric product offensive that will cover all vehicle segments, from the compact to the luxury class.”

The attention devoted to electric cars at the Paris show stole the spotlight from diesel-powered cars, once a staple of the European automobile market and past stars of this show.

Diesel’s inherently dirtier emissions are not welcome in Paris these days. To address the city’s notoriously bad air quality, the municipal government has since July 1 prohibited cars that were registered before 1997 from operating on the streets on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. By 2020, environmental activists predict, all diesels might be banned in Paris.

And the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has proposed expanding car-free areas. One just approved will transform a major thoroughfare along the Seine into a pedestrian zone.

But this city, where the electric-car-sharing service Autolib’ has been operating for nearly five years, would presumably be hospitable to more e-cars — as the electric revolution at the Paris Motor Show may have foreshadowed.

Edited October 11, 2016 by Ultraviolet™