Electric Car Demand Plunges Across Europe
Electric car sales plummeted across Europe last month as demand dried up despite the EU’s push to ban petrol and diesel vehicles by the middle of the next decade. The Telegraph has the story.
Sales of battery-powered cars dropped by 11.3% as demand in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, plunged by 28.9%, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA).
Only 13% of new registrations were electric, down from 13.9% in March last year and down from 14.6% for all of 2023.
Sales of electric cars have stalled despite Europe’s plans to ban the sale of new internal combustion engine cars by 2035.
Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and Tesla have all reported falling electric vehicle sales in the first three months of the year.
It came as new vehicle registrations overall fell by 5.3% across the European Union to 1m last month.
The ACEA has blamed the fall in sales in March on the early Easter holidays.
Hybrid cars accounted for 29% of the market in March, up from 24.4% in the same month a year ago.
Petrol vehicle sales also decreased by 10.2%, with notable reductions in France, Spain and Germany.
The downturn in the diesel market was even more severe, with an 18.5% drop in March.
Worth reading in full.
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So
Electric down 11.3%
Petrol down 10.2%
Diesel down 18.5%
Hybrid up 24.4%
Possibly the headline should be about hybrid sales?
Or the general decline in car sales.
It seems to me that the powers that deem to control us are getting their way. Dropping car sales is consistent with their goal of less cars overall. And fewer combustion engine cars are being sold which is definitely what they want.
I’m not sure what they want more, more electric cars or fewer cars in general. I reckon the latter.
Actually the apparent decline seems to be more to do with a very strong March last year. If you get away from individual months, the overall pattern seems to be moderate growth with battery electric maintaining a fairly constant market share.
Yes perhaps but the government are not pushing Hybrid sales they are pushing electric sales, and actually penalising with fines those who don’t sell enough of them. ——-In the past no one had to be bribed or fined out of their horse and cart into a vehicle. Because people know best how to spend their own money. But in todays pretend to save the planet world the government have decided they know best how our money should be spent, and they are prepared to spend trillions of it on Net Zero without even discussing the cost in parliament. Net Zero was simply waved through in 2019 with no regard for cost and with no idea whether the technologies required could even be invented. It is a bit like me declaring I will be a billionaire by 2030 with no idea at all how.
It looks like pure battery-electric ones are not doing well; what a surprise outside some local markets with special financial regimes to encourage their use. However, most manufacturers will not develop anything new without a typical 8 – 10 year production period (often with half-life minor tweaks), so if it’s definitely going to be 2035 for final new sales of a particular product, they won’t risk investing in anything that gets chopped off early for political reasons after next year.
In the meantime, some of them are still developing better types of battery that may make it in time to take over from petrol engines. Both Toyota and Nissan are moving in that direction, with solid state ones eventually taking over from the current products.
Electric sales will pick up if they manage to get the range up, the fire risk down and legislate to ensure you only need the one app / card to charge. There are weekly announcements of step changes in battery technology a.k.a. vapourware. Then they’ll need faster charging rather than a huge increase in charge points and lots of nuclear electric and upgraded electricity cables.
So 2030 and job done?
Electric cars sales will pick up if people do their sums and decide they are good value for money. Not because government coerce us all into them.