Price breaker: The Dacia Spring costs 15,500 euros with a bonus. Fits in the city: the Fiat 500e is available with two battery sizes. Discontinued model: The Smart Fortwo EQ is being further developed.
Image: F.A.Z.
Massive, fast, expensive: Most electric cars play in the luxury league and are hardly affordable for average earners. However, there are also significantly smaller models – and high subsidies that make the purchase attractive.
To understand how the market ticks, you only have to walk down Grosse Eschenheimer Strasse in Frankfurt. Three brand manufacturers – Polestar, Genesis, Nio – are represented here with elegant flagship branches. There is no e-car on the show floor that costs less than 50,000 euros. Some cars are so bulky that you wonder how they can navigate a gap in the parking garage. And there are no upper price limits in the industry. According to the ADAC e-car database, the gross list price for the most expensive e-Mercedes is just under 160,000 euros, for the most expensive Porsche it is just under 191,000 euros, and the most expensive Tesla is available for 141,000 euros.
From the manufacturer’s point of view, this model policy is understandable. Ranges of 600 kilometers and more require large car batteries, which are not only heavy but also very expensive. For the prices that batteries cost, you could easily buy a car with a combustion engine in some cases. But especially in the small car segment, customers pay attention to the price, so large profit margins are not possible for the manufacturers. Car manufacturers earn significantly more with expensive models – including many SUVs, whose share of new e-registrations was the highest last year.