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Europe’s Biggest Car Market to See First EV Slump Since 2016

German electric-vehicle sales are projected to drop for the first time in eight years as signs of a slump in the EV market are spreading.
Bloomberg
By Bloomberg
30 Jan
Volkswagen ID.3 Electric Car Production In Dresden Electric cars in a storage tower at a Volkswagen production facility in Dresden, Germany.

The VDA lobby expects shipments of purely battery-powered cars to decline 14% to 451,000 units this year as subsidy cuts weigh on demand, it said Tuesday.

Europe’s biggest auto market has been one of the main drivers of EV adoption, but inflation, high car prices and sub-par charging infrastructure are weighing on demand. A number of manufacturers have pushed back rollouts of new electric models, and rental firms are paring purchases for their fleets.

Volkswagen AG and Renault SA this week walked back plans to sell shares in their EV businesses, deterred by slowing demand and a brutal market for initial public offerings.

Read More: VW Joins Renault in Pulling Back From EV Stock Offering Efforts

In December, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government discontinued a subsidy for EVs at short notice, a year earlier than previously planned.

EV sales in Germany last declined in 2016 and have climbed each year since. The country sold over 524,000 fully electric cars in 2023 — more than any other market in Europe.

The projected drop this year means the share of purely battery-powered cars in Germany would slip to 16%, from around 18% in 2023.

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Noel 31 January 2024 02:38 AM

Remember how VW, Ford,Merc all laughed when an upstart Tesla, in Silicon Valley, said they would beat them all to EV car making. Now all German car loafers predict sales of 450,000 in 2024. Tesla made 1,800,000 in 2023 and predict 2.2 million this year. Tesla is often worth more than Ford, General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen and Stellantis combined. Tesla 10y share value has grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 55%. Making >18% profit per car while VW is 6% for ICE cars. So who is laughing now? Certainly not car company directors or engineers who have been thrashed technically in car design, robotic manufacturing and financially. And that's before you add the value of his self driving guidance system which is not quite final but is a decades ahead. Look at some of Musk's interview with Lex Fridman for an understanding of what he has does in his spare time when he is not running Tesla. SpaceX, StarLink, Neuralink, Solar City. Musk built his own supercharger network for Tesla which has 99.9% reliablity compared to 80% for others. Queue up in your $150K Porsche or Merc at the few public chargers and watch Teslas come and go at the massive Tesla network. He must laugh when the press say the bad news is "Tesla is recalling 2 million cars". His is a software upgrade done over the internet, not like the others who have to bring in each car and manually replace parts.