Electric vehicles are nothing new. The first electric vehicle in Germany was built in Coburg by the A. Flocken plant in 1888. Among Ferdinand Porsche's earliest endeavors was a hybrid vehicle in 1899. And back then 38 percent of all cars in the United States were electric. Then the combustion engine conquered all, driving electric cars from the streets.

Electric vehicles still have image problems in Germany today. A study by CAR Center Automotive Research at Duisburg-Essen University shows that only 1,808 new electric vehicles were acquired in the first eleven months of 2011, most of them as business cars. Just 101 eCars were purchased by private consumers. Given these numbers, there is some doubt as to whether the German government will achieve its goal of putting one million electric vehicles on Germany's roads by 2020.

In other countries the trend towards eDrives is more apparent: some 50,000 electric vehicles were sold worldwide in 2011, with particularly large numbers in the USA. "The electrification of drives is well underway, and a permanent part of the drive engineering world," noted Prof. Ferit Küçükay of TU Braunschweig in December. With respect to the "European driving cycle," the so-called "tank to wheel" efficiency of a conventional drive with a combustion engine compared with the "battery to wheel" efficiency of an electric drive is some three times lower. This advantage of electric vehicles in energy consumption and CO2 emissions is particularly important for supporting environmentally friendly transportation in megacities, explained Küçükay at the CTI Symposium in Berlin.

Electric vehicles could achieve a ten-percent global market share by 2030, according to 44.1 percent of participants surveyed at the symposium. One fourth of the 400 experts questioned see this happening by 2025. Bosch expects there to be around three million electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, and six million hybrid vehicles, out of 103 million new cars produced in 2020. After 2025, the rise of electric drives is expected to be strong enough to cause a palpable drop in the number of vehicles powered only by combustion. "At the latest, that is when the era of electromobility will really begin," the Bosch report suggests. Bosch is working with Daimler to promote the development of electric vehicles. A company just for that purpose is taking form in Hildesheim, south of Hannover.

The political sphere is also continuing to push in this direction: with its new ATEM ("drive technologies for electromobility") research initiative, the German Economics and Technology Ministry is trying to speed up the spread of vehicles with electric drive trains. Electric drives even have a place in motor sports: hybrid drives have been used in Formula 1 racing since 2009, and the FIA has announced a race specifically for eVehicles in 2013.

China is planning to have five million electric cars on the roads by 2020. EMobility is already being tested in 25 Chinese pilot cities - and this year's HANNOVER MESSE Partner Country is expected to present such projects at the trade fair (Hall 6). Electric drive trains are also among the central topics at the Research & Technology tradeshow (Hall 2) and at MobiliTec with the MobiliTec user forum and the E-MOTIVE joint stand for the Drive Engineering Research Association in the VDMA Electromobility forum (all located in Hall 25).