Posted on Dec. 2021 at 7:52
A leading figure in Volkswagen’s conversion to electric, is the ID.3 a success? After a little over fifteen months of marketing, the brand ensures that sales are up to its expectations. The air gap observed in registrations in recent months suggests qualifying the finding.
In a hurry to turn the page of “dieselgate”, the German group itself contributed to raising expectations around its new compact sedan, until its presentation with great fanfare. at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 2019 . The ID.3 is the first model to benefit from the MEB platform, dedicated to purely electric vehicles. It is also the first to roam a whole new software architecture, allowing regular remote updates as at Tesla.
Ignition delay
Very proud of his baby, the boss of the group Herbert Diess even made Elon Musk try it, before posting the video on his LinkedIn account. Ultimately, the ambition is nothing less than to make it the electric replacement for the Golf, which remained at the top of sales in Europe for very long years.
The beginnings were difficult: software problems forced Volkswagen to delay marketing nearly a year, until the fall of 2020. A year later, however, the brand celebrated in a press release a “great success”, advancing the figure of 144,000 orders received since the launch.
50% of buyers have never driven a Volkswagen before, while the rate of new customers on the brand’s other models is usually 36%.
Tesla’s Model 3 far ahead
Since this fall, however, the slowdown in sales seems very clear. In October, according to data from specialist analyst Matthias Schmidt, ID.3 registrations in Western Europe plunged 44% compared to the same month in 2020. And the fall was again 43% in November, according to data from the Jato Institute.
Last month, the ID.3 came only seventh on the sales charts for electric models in Europe, says Jato, with 4,707 registrations in 25 countries, followed by the electric version of the Peugeot 208, and well ahead of the Renault ZOE (8,658 units in November) and Tesla Model 3 (10,739), yet significantly more expensive.
In France, the director of the Volkswagen brand Gerrit Heinberg evokes “a good record”, with 4,881 registrations over the first eleven months of the year, and a forecast of 5,800 to 6,000 for the whole of 2021.
But these figures seem rather timid after the start of 2020, and 4,200 copies have passed in just three months of presence in the showrooms. The compact sedan only arrives at 74th position on the list of the best-selling models in 2021 in France, all engines combined, when the Model 3 is ranked fifteenth.
The impact of the chip shortage
The recent decline has several explanations. First, the comparison with the end of 2020 is misleading. “Reservations were open for a year,” says Gerrit Heimberg, director of the Volkswagen brand in France. Above all, the manufacturer, which needed to register as many electric cars as possible to try its CO2 objectives, “stuffed the ballot boxes” in the last weeks of 2020 according to the expression of a competitor, by urging its dealers to take many demonstration vehicles. This artifice boosted sales in 2020, but indirectly affected those in early 2021.
Moreover, the effects of semiconductor shortage are felt. “We have fairly low stocks at the moment,” confirms Gerrit Heimberg. The second part of the year was more difficult. Like all manufacturers, Volkswagen must cut production, including for its electric models yet classified as strategic.
In addition, the ID.3 has to face strong competition within the German group itself, because the ID.4, the brand’s first 100% electric SUV, is making a very promising start. In the first nine months of the year, Volkswagen says it has sold 72,700 copies worldwide, while sales did not begin until March. The ID.3, despite nine full months of sales, is only second with 52,700 registrations.
“Customers who buy electric cars make the same choices as everyone else,” reports Matthias Schmidt: “They turn to SUVs or crossovers, which this year accounted for more than 40% of electric registrations in Western Europe. The ID.4 is riding on this craze, not the ID.3. From this point of view, the poor form of the Germanic compact sedan is not necessarily good news for Renault’s electric Mégane, which will face it head-on in this niche from the spring.