06/11/09

Carmakers Talk About Their Development Plans

“Carmakers are building up the zero-emission future, thanks to more efficient engines, which use new fuels, as well as to the adoption of electric motors” said Fabio Orecchini, H2Roma scientific coordinator, at a round table scheduled on the second day of the conference. The carmakers who joined H2Roma 2009 as partners had a debate with journalists of Corriere della Sera, EcoCar, La Repubblica and OmniAuto.it.

Their talk highlighted the issue of the electric car as something that belongs to a future not far from being at hand. “The Mitsubishi I-MiEV, which was, for the first time, exhibited and test-driven at H2Roma 2009, shows that technology has really advanced and that Mitsubishi is determined to make it available for a large public” – said Guglielmo Consonni, General Manager and CEO of Mitsubishi Motors Italia. Also Nissan confirms that electric cars are about to arrive and Andrea Alessi, Managing Director of Nissan Italia, said: “The Nissan Leaf is already in our business plan for next year. 150 units a month are scheduled to be delivered for the last three months of 2010 and in 2011 we foresee to sell 4,000 units.”

At H2Roma the Mercedes Group announced the arrival of the Mercedes Class A Fuel-Cell, which belong to the zero emission range designed for the market. “The e-Mobility Italy project, developed together with ENEL, will allow a hundred Italian drivers to use the Smart Electric Drive daily. Its production will start next week” said Paolo Lanzoni, Press Manager at Marcedes-Benz Italia

Daniele Chiari, Fiat Group Automobiles Product Planning Manager said: “There is a set of solutions which, at the moment, are proving to be excellent to reduce fuel consumption and pollution. The path towards the zero emission car is highly important but we must go on improving the present technologies which will, instead, be available on most cars being produced in the next decade.”

Great attention was also drawn to the issue of government incentives for buying low-emission cars. Lorenzo Matthias from Toyota Motor Italia said: “Our experience clearly shows that the market spread of technologically innovative cars is remarkable when incentive policies are adopted.”

Carlo Basadonna, Marketing Manager of Arval Italia, a leading company in long term car rental, emphasized the fact that even companies pay great attention to the environmental impact of their fleets. According to the data coming from a research illustrated by Mr Basadonna to the H2Roma audience, if, at present, only 17% of Italian companies has at least one low emission and consumption vehicle in their fleets (LPG, methane gas, high efficiency models), this percentage goes up to 77% as soon as the intention of buying hybrid, electric or bio-fuelled vehicles in the next three years is taken into account.

Actually what came out of the debate is that the car is experiencing a watershed, a time in which, according to Fabio Orecchini “a lot of work is concentrated on tomorrow’s technologies in order to guarantee today’s cars a future.”