Electric Car Demand Plummets Amid Backlash Over High Prices
Electric cars saw their market share plunge by a quarter in Britain last month, as hard-up customers shunned the high prices and soaring insurance costs. The Telegraph has more.
Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) represented just 14.7% of new car sales in January, down from 19.7% in December, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).
It comes after full-year figures for 2023 revealed that the market share of EVs was going into reverse for the first time, with many drivers still put off by high upfront costs, unevenly spread charging networks and big insurance premiums.
In a new forecast, the SMMT cut the predicted market share of EVs this year from 22.3% to 21%.
The industry body said 20,935 new EVs were registered in January – taking the total registered in Britain so far to just over one million.
However, experts warned that the lacklustre figures were a sign that consumers were shunning new cars in favour of second-hand alternatives.
The numbers will intensify industry calls for Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor, to slash VAT on EV purchases in his March 6th Budget, a move that the SMMT claims would turbocharge sales.
The slump in EV sales growth came amid a wider market malaise, with private car sales tumbling by 15.8% in January compared to a year earlier.
Some 142,876 new cars were registered overall, up by 10,882 compared to a year earlier. However, the increase was weighted heavily towards fleet buyers such as car rental firms, which accounted for 90,314 sales.
Worth reading in full.
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How will slashing VAT address the issues?
It won’t. The market doesn’t want the product.
Geoff Buys Cars over on YouTube made a pretty compelling argument about why this is happening. He said that the government knew this will never catch on, and did all it could to get car manufacturers heavily invested with this industry. And now that the EV market is collapsing, so will car manufacturers.
So the goal wasn’t to get us all to drive EVs (even though if the predicted collapse never came, that would be an acceptable outcome for them). It was to destroy the automotive market. Either way, the outcome is the same: people will no longer be able to afford cars and will depend on the government for transport.
The MacMaster and EV Carnage are also good
Geoff buys cars also identifies that electric cars (EVs) do not deliver what petrol diesel (ICE) cars can deliver. You can think of loads of road movies, Easy Rider, Thelma and Louise etc. the whole ethos of these is the freedom of the open road, just fill your tank with cheap fuel and head off into the wild blue yonder with nobody aware of where you are or what you are doing. EVs kill off the road movie freedom dream, Thelma and Louise just does not quite work when the dialogue revolves around how to find the next charging point , not to mention that the authorities will be tracking you and waiting at that charging point. It is not just lack of chargers that detracts from EVs popularity. The whole charging process requires a high threshold of money and technical commitment. I gather some of these chargers need you to sign in with a smart-phone app, at which point they will deduct £45 from your account before you even start charging. Back in my youth once you passed your test you could buy a clapped out Mini from dodgy Dave, get low cost third party insurance from shady Peter… Read more »
Yep. The idea of the road trip is going away. With an EV you can’t just get into your car and drive off and see where the road takes you.
You have missed the enormous snag to the Government. It raises about £35 Billion a year from car and vehicle taxes, and when we have EVs they will have to replace this cash. When there are no IC cars (the western manufacturers are all pulling out of making electric ones, they don’t sell) due to the Government tax on selling IC cars, income tax will have to more than double, and there will be a revolution! How this is not understood by any of our politicians (most of whom supposedly studied PPE) Philosophy, Politics and ECONOMICS, well obviously only Cant, Hegel etc, but they didn’t like Hegel because he believed in freedom. The MMF number is highly distorted by the Government tax breaks for companies to buy electric. Even so many have found them pretty poor for reps and longer trips and are back to diesels! Hertz is dumping a great number in the US, no one will hire them either. Wiki: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) developed a philosophy based on freedom within a wider philosophical system offering novel views on topics ranging from property and punishment to morality and the state. In fact I believe they didn’t study… Read more »
The tax offset will be gained from increased taxation for EVs, increased taxation on power used to charge EVs, on increased taxation on power in general, and yes, from increased income tax. There will be no revolution. The people are too pacified for that to happen. And even if the government cannot recuperate all that income, so what? It’s not like they’ll have to take a pay cut. It’s us that will have to suffer for it, and I’ve seen next to no evidence that they actually care what happens to us.
“The numbers will intensify industry calls for Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor, to slash VAT on EV purchases in his March 6th Budget, a move that the SMMT claims would turbocharge sales. “
Or alternatively scrap all “green” subsidies of any kind and use the money saved to cut taxes across the board which would turbocharge the entire economy. God give me strength does everyone now just accept it’s the state’s job to micromanage what people buy? The answer to socialism not working is always more socialism.
Yes, people expect fascism, it looks like.
And it’s pretty obvious that everyone is in a socialist mindset. The solution to every problem these days seems to be “government should spend more on it”. And the irony is that we’re here because the government spent money on it. It enticed car manufacturers to enter into the EV market by promising to make their cars more attractive with subsidies.
“Problem”, reaction, solution
Apparently that’s a David Icke conspiracy theory, lol.
The intention tof is the complete destruction of the country.
Build Back Better…don’t forget.
No! No! No!
Turbocharging the economy will increase CO2 emissions.
Report at once to the Command Centre for a flogging.
In the car industry registrations are not the same thing as sales as most of us would understand it.
Dealers pre-register vehicles to achieve volume discounts and the actual car may not be ‘sold’ to an actual buyer for weeks or months.
All the propaganda from the MSM (including, sadly, GBNews) in early january was just that – Government propaganda aimed at selling the lie that EV’s are desirable and popular with the public. They are neither.
EV subsidy ended.
“My old man said follow the subsidy and don’t dilly dally on the way / Off went the skip with me old banger in it / I walked behind with me old cock Linnet / But I dillied and dallied, dallied and dillied / Lost me nerve and kept old wreck on road / Stopped on the way to have few down the Angel now I can’t find my way home”— Bloody Marvilis innit?
Drink driving. Gasp!
Do these boneheads actually believe if BEVs were the same or lower price as ICEVs, everyone would flock to buy them?
It’s lack of range, higher insurance costs, inconvenience in charging (many do not have garages or off-road parking), high insurance and poor resale costs.
Car rental/lease business model is buy cheap in bulk, make profit on second-hand resale – this differential is not there with BEVs, which is why Hertz USA has just dumped 20 000 Tesla to be replaced with ICEVs, citing low customer demand, high maintenance costs, poor resale value.
When will these clowns ever understand command nd control economics ALWAYS fails.
EV’s are the Betamax of the automotive industry and will destroy the Chinese economy. Not all bad.
The real crux cause of the ev woes is poor sales! You can make as many as you want but if people don’t buy them, tuff titty for you fish face!