New Electric Vehicles for 2015

I have to admit that I was less than perfectly kind to the folks from Volvo, Saab and Mercedes Benz who were manning their companies’ electric vehicle booths at the Los Angeles Auto Show in the 2008-2009 time frame.  I came across Volvo first, and I noted that a physical booth was there.  But that was all: no prototype, no drawings, and no specs.  “So, let me see if I can sum this up,” I’d say with thinly veiled disdain. “You can’t tell me what it will look like, how it will perform, what it will cost, or what year I’ll be able to buy one.”

Actually, I had to feel somewhat sorry for the poor sap who, looking at his shoes, responded, “Yes sir, that’s correct.”

The person whose wisdom I really challenged was the product manager who somehow thought that a presence (if one could call it that) at a major auto show was a valid idea.  Given that type of thinking, wasn’t it likely that the whole thing was a ruse?  I remember walking away thinking that there was just as much evidence that these people were building a rocketship to Neptune as they were working to produce a functioning electric vehicle here on Earth.

I’m happy to say that I’m wrong.  Here are EVs that will be on the market in 2015, many of which carry the insignia that I named above.

To those poor chumps in the booths six or seven years ago: sorry for the scorn.