Who killed the Chinese electric car?  BYD, apparently.

The battery maker-turned-automaker announced that they’ll not be making the E6 as quickly as planned and that the 100 planned models for use as taxis in the area around the company’s HQ may be the only battery-electrics made.  This comes, of course, well after their financial projections showed a big boost thanks to future sales of electric cars.

Apparently, those interested enough stock buyers to make the company comfortable enough to say “Oh, wait.. did we say electrics?  Woops, we meant concept cars.”

Photo courtesy of WikiCommons

It’s possible, though, that the company is actually just responding to recent events that have convinced them that maybe this foray into cars wasn’t such a great idea – nor was it as easy as they’d thought.  Bertel Schmitt at TTAC points out that the company has recently made agreements with Volkswagen and Daimler to supply batteries for their vehicles, so maybe BYD is thinking that they should just stick with what they’re good at.

Last year when investor Warren Buffet put up a gigantic chunk of change to buy up 10% of the company, though, that wasn’t exactly his plan.  He seemed keen on the idea of electric cars and the future.  At that point, BYD was only just coming out with concepts of their F3DM hybrid-electric car.  Which has turned out to be a sales flop and a half.  In fact, it did marketing triple gainers with a twist and looked really good until it actually hit the sales floor, where it belly flopped like a 7-year old on his first day of swim lessons.

Such a promising electric the E6 was too.  I mean, it looked like a normal car (unlike most of these other EV concepts), it had a (reported) respectable range (200-250 miles per charge, depending on which press release you read), and seemed poised to take Asia by storm.

How do you say “bummer” in Chinese?

Oh well.  We can still look forward to the ultra-mega-compact Nissan LEAF and hope that thing does well as the first factory-produced electric car to hit America’s shores since the EV1.

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1. The Center for Automotive Research Estimates Distribution Pattern of Electric Vehicles Through 2015

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