PARIS — European carmakers are looking to a bevy of fuel-efficient, lower-emissions models going on display at the Paris Auto Show this week to weather a depressed market and tough new European Union pollution standards.
It has been a miserable two years for the industry since the last Paris show in 2008, as the industry faced the worst economic slowdown since the Great Depression.
But while the worst of the global recession is past, carmakers are aware that their market has changed.Consumers remain cautious and environmental rules are more stringent, and the auto industry hopes that hybrids and electrics will be a big part of the way forward.
The spotlight will shine on hometown favorites Renault and PSA Peugeot Citroen, both of which will unveil road-ready hybrid and electric cars or light trucks to the hundreds of thousands of visitors expected to attend the show between Saturday and Oct. 17.
Among the most anticipated unveilings will be Peugeot’s 3008 Hybrid 4, the world’s first full diesel hybrid vehicle, and Renault’s Fluence Z.E. (for “zero emissions”), an all-electric midsize sedan.
European carmakers especially are under pressure to sell smaller and less-polluting cars and light trucks to meet tightening European regulations on carbon dioxide emissions.
Ford CEO Alan Mulally kicked off the unveilings early at a glitzy pre-show event across the street from France’s presidential palace. He unveiled the new Ford Focus ST, one of three new Focuses that the American manufacturer has developed for worldwide sales. The company hopes to build at least 10 vehicles off the undercarriage. Ford expects to make 2 million Focus-based vehicles a year worldwide by 2012.
“The Future, Now” is the slogan organizers have chosen for this year’s edition of the show, which holds two days of media previews starting today before opening to the public Saturday.
The show - which dates back to 1898, making it the world’s oldest - will feature about 100 world and European premieres, organizers promise.
Carmakers have been flaunting technologies aimed at cutting or eliminating carbon dioxide emissions from their vehicles at every major car show since the last Paris gathering in 2008. But this time more and more will be models headed for showrooms, not concept or idea cars.
“Maybe access to market-ready electric vehicles is going to be the big news in Paris,” said Carlos Da Silva, a senior market analyst at industry forecasters IHS Global Insight in Paris. “It will be a very “green” show,” Da Silva said in an interview.
Other ready-to-roll fuel efficient machines on display include Peugeot’s iOn, Mitsubishi’s i-MiEV and the Nissan Leaf.
Besides the 3008, PSA Peugeot-Citroen plans to launch the Citroen DS5 Hybrid as part of its goal to have 1 million low-emission cars in its fleet by 2012. That is in line with similar targets set by other carmakers as they seek to meet an EU deadline for reducing their carbon emissions, Da Silva said.
Global car production fell 17 percent over 2008 and 2009, dropping to 57 million vehicles last year. Programs to scrap older cars introduced after the economic crisis helped support European carmakers and their suppliers, but now that they’re being withdrawn, growth is stalling in the region.
Car sales in Europe will drop to 17.7 million this year from 18.2 million in 2009,according to J.D. Power Automotive Forecasting, which expects sales to stagnate around that level next year as well.
Production will rebound to its pre-crisis level of 69 million vehicles this year, Autofacts predicts, but nearly all that growth will come from China and North America.
By the time of the next Paris show in 2012, for the first time ever, more than half of the world’s car production will be in emerging markets such as China, Brazil and India, said Gerard Morin, head of PwC’s automobile consultancy in France.
By 2020, CEO Philippe Varin thinks hybrids will grab as much as 15 percent of the market.
That’s more optimistic than the forecasters at Pricewaterhouse Cooper’s Autofacts consultancy, which sees electric cars capturing 1 percent of the global car market by 2016.
Hybrids may reach 4 percent market share by then, Autofacts predicts, leaving a full 95 percent of the market to traditional internal combustion engines.
By 2020, electric vehicle production is likely to hit only 1.5 million units, according to Autofacts, as the infrastructure to recharge the cars’ batteries, as well as the batteries’ expense and limits to their autonomy hold back wider adoption of the cars by consumers.
Hybrid technologies range from full hybrids, which alternate between gasoline and electric engines to achieve improved fuel economy, to so-called partial hybrids, or cars with such features as start-stop technology, which automatically shuts down and restarts an engine when stopped to reduce idling and carbon emissions.
Business, Pages 27 on 09/30/2010