German technology giant Siemens AG said it will exit its electric car charging points business, as demand and market development turned out weaker than expected.
Siemens noted the slow rate of adoption of the electric cars in the German market. German government announced a plan in May 2011 to have one million electric cars in Germany by 2020.
So far, the numbers for reaching that goal do not show much optimism. About 4,300 electric cars were registered in Germany in 2012. The models in use are gasoline hybrids that don’t require the public charging infrastructure like pure electric cars.
By comparison more than 51,000 new electric cars were registered last year, while in Japan 24,423 were registered.
The company emphasized, though, that it would continue to make wall boxes for recharging electric cars privately at home. It would also continue research on electric vehicle motors, vehicle to grid communications and wireless charging.
[source: WSJ]
