Opel curtails plans for Adam EV

Sun, 11 Nov 2012

With the price premium of electric vehicles still high, Opel is reportedly holding off on development of the Adam EV to avoid giving customers sticker shock. According to Automotive News Europe, Opel was working on an electric version of the Adam minicar that was unveiled at the Paris Motor Show, but the price the automaker would have had to charge for the final product was apparently too high to reasonably ask for from customers.

The article says that Opel had already made an Adam EV test mule using components from the electric Chevrolet Spark that goes into production next year. Even using shared technology, however, the anticipated pricing made it a bad business case. Opel's head of sales and marketing, Alfred Rieck laid out the chicken-and-egg scenario, saying that some customers are not willing to pay the higher prices for EVs right now, but that the only thing that will drive the prices down is increased sales.

With this in mind, it will be interesting to see where the Spark EV is priced and how well it does with customers.

By Jeffrey N. Ross