Electric vehicle dealers ready for the boom (Minneapolis)

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Nissan Leaf

"We’re in the news twice as much as we sell a car," said James Courteau, a mechanic at The Electric Vehicle Store in Edina. "As long as gas is cheap, people don't care about efficiency, which is a bummer."

Minnesota’s electric-vehicle manufacturers and dealers seem to be playing a waiting game. They hope interest spikes in their products as gas prices rise and as potential buyers become more educated about the benefits of electric-vehicle ownership. They're also waiting for technology improvements — longer battery life, in particular — that could make electric vehicles more mainstream.

It helps somewhat that car companies are certainly pushing electric and hybrid models. During the recent Vikings-Saints game, for example, Nissan debuted an ad for its all-electric Leaf, implying that ownership leads to happy feelings and perhaps a hug from a polar bear. However, the industry’s reality isn’t quite as warm and fuzzy, at least not yet.

"The bigger manufacturers have seen the light," said Jukka Kukkonen, founder of PlugInConnect and president of the Minnesota Electric Auto Association. "But how fast the vehicles will be coming is another question. It makes sense that electric vehicles will take part of the market, but how big that portion is, we don’t know."

Read the full story in the Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal.