The Dawn of the Electric Car

Many have been waiting years for this day, because today marks the true dawn of the electric and plug-in hybrid car, the day when the big automakers—GM and Nissan among them—show off the vehicles they will be selling later this year.

Finally.

The Detroit Auto Show, traditionally the place for carmakers to show off the whizz-bang gadgetry they have in store for the future and may never bring to showroom floors, opens today. And it will include a new emphasis on small cars, fuel-efficient cars, and, yes, finally, electric cars. The auto show will include a 37,000-square-foot feature on its main showroom floor showing off the electric cars the world’s automakers are bringing to market after years of talk.

General Motors plans to roll out its Chevrolet Volt later this year, after years of effort. The Volt, a plug-in hybrid with a small gasoline engine that kicks in to extend its electric batteries’ range, has been in the works since long before GM tumbled into bankruptcy, and it's one of the vehicles the company is counting on to lead it back to the promised land of profitability.

But the Volt won’t come cheap when it comes to the masses, at least not at first. GM plans to price the first-of-its-kind American car in the $40,000 price range, the kind of cost one associates with a lower-end BMW more than a Chevy. But here’s a nice incentive from GM’s majority stockholder, the U.S. government. Buy a Volt and you’ll get a $7,500 tax credit.

That’s not a bad incentive, as incentives go.

GM has showed off the Volt at the auto show before. But this time, it’s on the eve of actually bringing the car to market.

GM isn’t the only one of the big automakers that will be showing off its new green colors at the show. Nissan’s Leaf, a rechargeable electric car, will make its debut at a U.S. auto show beginning today. While the Leaf, which lacks an engine to charge its battery, won’t go as far as a Volt, it will cost about $10,000 less.

If you want a Ford Focus plug-in or a Toyota Prius Plug-in, you’ll have to wait until 2011.

And there will be other electric offerings on display, but just for display. Volvo will show off an electric version of its C30, and Fiat will show an electric 500.

And, of course, none of these can claim the title of the first electric car to market. The electric car is already on the road and spinning off entire new companies.

Tesla’s pricey roadster, weighing in with a $101,500 price went on the market in 2008 and already has showrooms in places like Los Angeles. Fisker Automotive, another venture-funded carmaker, will roll out its Karma sedan, priced at $87,900, later this year.

While the new kids on the block are clearly aiming for consumers with plenty of spare change, the mass market is another matter. And the big question for GM, Nissan, and everyone else is whether consumers who have stayed away from car lots in droves in the past year will return for new, even revolutionary, products.

That’s a tough one to guess at, though hybrids have certainly been more popular than their original detractors expected. And there is one place to turn for guidance—Wall Street.

When a company with no profits to show so far went public last fall, it made the biggest splash of the IPO year. A123Systems just happens to make the kind of batteries that will be used in electric cars, among other things. Wall Street bet $370 million on that company, the largest IPO of 2009.

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Kent Bernhard Jr. is News Editor of Portfolio.com