Electric Cars Left Behind As Oil Price Plunges

Plug-in electric vehicles failed to win over U.S. consumers amid the auto industry’s record sales in 2015, as low gasoline costs and daunting sticker prices damped demand. Americans bought just 102,600 such vehicles in 2015, a 17 percent decline from the previous year, according to researcher Autodata. Persuading car buyers to choose electric got more difficult as gasoline slid to $2 a gallon by the end of last year. “Why should I go electric and pay more when gas is so cheap?” Ludwig Willisch, chief executive officer of BMW of North America, said in an interview. --Dana Hull, Bloomberg, 6 January 2016