Ford backs down on plans to scrap electric cars

OSLO (AFP) — US auto maker Ford backed down from its plans to destroy some 300 electric cars in the United States and Europe following fierce protests from the Norwegian government and Greenpeace.

"We are going to round up the cars still in use in the United States and in Europe and gradually bring them to Norway," Ford Norway spokesman Jan Johansson told AFP on Thursday.

Ford raised the ire of environmentalists when it announced plans to scrap 480 Think cars, electric vehicles made in Norway and exported to the United States and Europe.

The group had invested in the small Norwegian carmaker Think Nordic in 2001, but pulled out of the project in 2003 after it decided to focus its clean-car efforts on hydrogen-powered vehicles instead of battery-driven ones.

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