A real pavement in the pond. At a round table held last week in Munich BMW’s director of development, Klaus Fröhlich, said European drivers do not want battery cars. “There is no demand for electric vehicles from customers. None, “he said. “There are requests from regulators, but none from customers. From what we see, electric vehicles are destined for China and California. Everywhere else, it is better to have plug-in hybrids with good battery life. “While global automakers have announced plans to invest 164 billion euros in the electrification of their range between 2019 and 2023 (according to AlixPartner), this statement has, to say the least, thrown a cold.
Anecdotal sales
The debate is not new, however. Since he is president of the Association of European Automobile Manufacturers (Acea), Carlos Tavares, the boss of PSA, keeps reminding that the conditions must be met for sales of electric cars finally take off, claiming in particular to the public authorities to participate in the financing of a sufficient network of charging stations. The disappointing sales of Tesla in the first quarter of 2019 also contributed to the little music about the lack of appetite for battery-powered cars – and it is not sure whether Record figures announced Tuesday for the second quarter change the mood: the Californian manufacturer did not give a geographical distribution, simply to indicate that the bulk of its sales had been made in the United States.
For now, sales figures on the Old Continent seem to give reason to Cassandra. The battery-powered vehicle remains anecdotal: according to the firm EV-Volumes, it sold nearly 118,000 100% electric cars in the first five months of the year, and 227,000 including rechargeable hybrids. These figures are certainly up sharply compared to the previous year (99,500 over six months) but they represent only 1.7% of new car sales (and 3.3% including rechargeable hybrids).
Arrival of new models
While insufficient supply is often cited as an obstacle, the arrival of new models will it allow the demand to really fly away? Apart the Tesla Model 3 (26.200 sales over five months, still according to EV-Volumes), the newcomers have not really sparked this year: the other top-selling models remained the Renault ZOE (19,400), the Nissan Leaf (14,100) , the BMW i3 (13,850), and the VW e-Golf (10,400). Sales of the Hyundai Kona (9,640), the Jaguar i-PACE (5,640), the Kia Niro EV (4,480) or the Audi e-tron (5,060) have not really changed the face of the market. It remains to be seen whether the arrival this autumn of new, cheaper city cars, such as the Peugeot e-208, the OPel Corsa-e, the VW ID3, or the new ZOE, will change the situation.
“If this is the only way to get around the cities, sales will eventually take off. We will arrive at a breaking point, “predicts Gaëtan Toulemonde, an analyst at Deutsche Bank. In the meantime, “fears about autonomy and cost remain key barriers to purchase,” said Laurent Petizon, CEO of AlixPartners France, who has just done a study on the subject.
If the recent batteries, promising autonomy of 400 kilometers or more, can mitigate the first concern, the second remains however well and truly pregnant. “What is certain is that without the subsidies things get complicated,” recalls Nicolas Meilhan, at EV-Volumes. In fact, the most dynamic European markets for the electric vehicle (Norway, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Netherlands), are also those where the financial incentives are the most interesting.