While EV sales in Germany are collapsing like plum pudding, diesels and petrol cars are making gains. How come?
The verdict is in Frank…but the jury…is out. It is one of the beautiful sentences after which Horacio Cane put on his sunglasses in CSI: Miami. The verdict has now also been reached on the sale of EVs in Germany in January. And that doesn't paint a pretty picture for plug adepts. And actually not, for the market in a broader sense.
According to figures from the Verband der Automobilindustrie, sales of EVs in Germany in January 2024 fell by…54.9 percent compared to December 2023. Yes, you read that right dear reader, 54.9 percent. Plug-in hybrids are also sold less often, recording a minus of 19.6 percent. Petrol cars were sold slightly more often (+9.1 percent), as were diesels (+9.5 percent). The entire market, however, is down 11.7 percent.
Is it fair to compare? Yes and no. December and January are different months. It used to be the case that many cars were 'sold' in January so that they were 'one year younger' when resold. But today, car sales, like everything else, are driven primarily by government policy.
An obvious reason for the decline in EV sales is that the German government has abruptly decided to turn off the subsidy tap for this. And then it turns out that the question suddenly falls off its pedestal more than Thijs Römer and Marco Borsato combined.
It is likely that the fact that the smart customer quickly arranged an EV in December also plays a role here. As a result, the figures in that month were extra rosy and now extra dark. However, analysts expect that this trend will continue, also in view of the general decline in the car market as a whole. The VDA expected over the entire year, a contraction of the German car market of 1 percent and a decline of the EV market of 9 percent.
That may not sound extreme, shocking, but there is something to keep in mind. The total German car market would therefore amount to 2.82 million units this year. And that is still a quarter (!) less than in the years before the Rona, the chip crisis, megainflation and 'Ukraine'…
So it is no longer what it used to be, the car market. In that respect, the ESG policy is successful. Except that the VDA also estimates that the global car market will grow by 2 percent this year. So it is mainly us Northern Europeans who slow down, while the rest of the world wastefully accelerates. Whose deed.
This article Crater: German EV sales collapse like plum pudding first appeared on Autoblog.nl.
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