“Carmakers' own statements to investors put electric cars at profit parity with combustion by the end of the decade, and BMW and Volvo Cars say they are already there on their newest models. Price and margin parity comes from scale.”
and
“Renault makes higher margins on its smallest electric models than on its larger ones, and Stellantis expects its ~€15,000 e-car to reach cost parity with ICEs in 2028.”
So, they aren’t only building (small) electric cars in order to meet EU emission regulations anymore.
That page also has bad news “Car CO₂ emissions are barely falling”. I think that’s mostly a matter of time, though. Even if all car and truck sales would be for fully electric vehicles, it would take decades to get rid of all ICE vehicles.
If governments were serious and fair about it, they'd just provide decent subsidies (or similar formula) to people who don't have enough money to switch, and it'd happen faster. What's going to happen though, is that many governments will just tax ICE vehicles to death (+ the cheaper chinese vehicles) while blaming you for not having enough money to switch.
Lower income people aren't buying new cars, they buy second hand.
So be incentivising others to purchase new EVs over combustion, it creates a supply for the second hand market in 5-10 year horizon for those lower income earners. And while subsidies are in place for new models, this further pushes down the price of used EVs.
It'll be interesting what happens to Australias second hand EV market when the subsidies end in 2029.
It could be argued that just returning the tax money to the people (and/or reducing regressive taxes) is a fairer approach as it gives money to those who cycle or take public transport as well as those who switch to EVs.
A clear weakness is that mileage readings can be altered. This used to matter on a smaller scale: dodgy second-hand sales, but now more or less anyone could be considered as potentially incentivised to interfere.
The mileage must remain a changeable field since the recording component may need replacement, for example, after accident damage or to correct a fault in the assembly that recording memory is part of.
A more central issue is the synergy between fuel consumption and damage to roads. Heavier vehicles do more damage but also burn more gas and so pay more tax, a synergy between cost and revenue. A flat rate based on mileage alone would equate all EVs as the same regardless of some being massively more damaging than others. We would need different rates for difference classes/weights of vehicles.
The BYD Dolphin Surf is 20K Euros in Belguim. This is the same care as the Atto 1.
Presumably it's European duties designed to drive up the price of cheap Chinese electric vehicles that is the difference.
Apparently the EU has tariffs of up to 36% on Chinese electric vehicles.
For example the Dacia Spring that is selling for around 17K Euros in Germany. And then there are tax rebates, discounts, etc. that are causing some of these cars to be available for a lot less occasionally in some markets.
Markets where EVs have been available in larger numbers for a while now have a sizable EV market. Australia is relatively early with its adoption, so the second hand market is a lot smaller there. The EU as a relatively early adopter has a lot of EVs from 2020 or earlier that are still under warranty and being traded in quite large numbers now. In the last few months these been a very hot commodity as lots of people are feeling the pain of high fuel prices.
All these new small cars will become a large part of the second hand car market in a few years. There will many be millions of them on the roads in a few years. And they last quite long.
(normally something being essential drives the price up)
As far as I know the closest city with public transport counts 100k residents, but there are 60 smaller towns in my province alone.
You may not need car daily, but you definitely need it at least weekly.
You have to be quite central in quite a big city to not need a car. But that does cover quite a lot of people - I would say much of the population of London and the most central bits of Manchester and Birmingham, which is easily 10-20m people.
Because i don't live in a big city (and i would dread to) the 10km commute to work is either
1) 15-25 min by car
2) 25-30 min by bike
3) 40-60 min by public transport, with at least one change
And i'm lucky as we recently moved the office to be a good 4km nearer from my home. That was further out requiring 25min by car, and aobut 1h30min by public transport with at least two changes.
Also if i want to do anything beside going in my backyard on my free time, car is a necessity.
https://www.byd.com/cz/konfigurovat/dolphin-surf.html
Sounds like saving EU car companies at all cost paid by EU customers who are not interested in saving them.
China cancelled subsidies to BYD this year, and last year, those subsidies were 1/3 of BYD profits. Subsidies helped get them off the ground but they were unit-profitable by the time they got to exporting.
Xiaomi never had subsidies at all, their cars were profitable from launch, with 6 month waitlists to buy. Their export plan is to start with Germany first because they're cocky as hell and the cars are really nice.
10 years ago, a new Renault Clio had a starting price under 14 000 €.
They see how the EU allows EU car companies to gouge their citizens and figured "eh, might as well join in on it. Pure profit."
Having to recharge the car during a single trip being seen as an issue by OP.
Where are the runarounds for people who don't need to lug around kids or baggage?
And we need the charging capacity for all those vehicles which is a huge issue. For example in the Netherlands this shows the capacity available to use extra power connections:
https://capaciteitskaart.netbeheernederland.nl/capaciteitska...
All red. The goals of the environmental improvements should connect with the actual real world available capacity. Otherwise it's just a dream.
Open Autotrader -> Fiat 500e -> New -> First car: https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202506113398641 discounted to £15k. That is just a really cheap car. Even the nominal RRP £23,685 is cheap. If you want cheaper there is Dacia Spring and the cheapest BYD.
> The goals of the environmental improvements
The Netherlands of all people should understand about sea level rise and the real world capacity available to absorb CO2.
> The Netherlands of all people should understand about sea level rise and the real world capacity available to absorb CO2.
That's interesting!
If you want a really small car, which Americans don't, there's the Topolino.
If you buy a car anyway, might as well pay a bit more and get one that is useful in more situations.
Mazda and Toyota have dragged a bit on pure-EV designs despite Toyota's excellent hybrids, because they're unwilling to give up on petrol engines. But they seem to be gradually getting the memo.
There's been a few of these like the Renault Twizy, and the limitations make them a gimmick that doesn't sell very well.
For example the VW Polo starts at 25K but if you want the bigger battery, its 35k.
If I where to go EV home charging instead, I'd need to have it more or less plugged in every night. Which of course isn't a shower stopper especially when fuel savings are factored in.
But in my case the MSRP of my car+ fuel costs+ time/convenience is a slightly better experience than if I had a full EV with it's associated MSRP/convenience.
I look forward to my first EV, cuz I know I'll have a "come to god" moment where I realize how much easier/simpler charging at home is.
There are many times I tried to charge and got asked to indstall apps or the charger wasn't working. Blocked by a petrol car.
Charging in europe comes with a learning curve.
In the case of Stellantis I believe this is driven by "compliance" requirements - the need to sell a certain percentage of EVs to avoid being fined by the EU. So they're not especially great EVs, but once they go to the lease firm they're counted as "sold". Someone may take a loss on the depreciation later, but not the driver.
A special consideration for Motability is that PIP recipients aren't allowed to save up for anything, so whatever vehicle they have has to be on finance.
Enjoy the overnight cheap electricity while it lasts. The only long-term strategy is investment in solar and batteries – use your temporary savings the government is giving you to invest in solar etc. Some governments are signalling that we have a role to play in electricity infrastructure investment...
Governments are only temporarily letting you get away with not paying the 0.35-0.80 EUR fuel duty on each litre of petrol/diesel (which then has VAT added. These taxes amount to 100s of billions a year across all of Europe). UK is steaming ahead with a per-mile tax on EVs and hybrids, for example.
8999 and we can start having a conversation, people can’t afford a 25k new car for gods sake.
- The battery and motor ecosystem is dominated by Chinese companies. These will happily build EU factories. Embrace and learn.
- Market size is not too much of the problem.The Chinese market is a lot larger, but not ten times.
Perhaps regulatory capture in the EU by large established players is a big part of the problem?
But on that note, chinese companies aren't building a 10k car profitably. Their OEMs have a dizzying array of subsidies and agreements that allow "market friendly price fixing" and protection from going bust. They are very smartly playing a long game that might end up making everyone better off, we'll see.
A EU or US OEM in the same position would just not be possible from the start. -An existing one IE VW or Ford could leverage massive chains to drive down MSRP, but the public nature of the companies won't allow that for too long. -A new OEM ie "slate trucks" has gone thru this, seeing MSRP jump by 1/3-1/2 simply because decision of the then ruling party changed rebate scenario, as well as global shipping rates skyrocketing.
Cannot this be said about anything? Choose a long enough finance and it's "cheap". Let's forget you'd be paying (at least in Europe) easily 1.6x the price of the car because of the small payments.
£313/mo is more expensive than the cheapest new car leases, but you wouldn't want to drive a car through London zone 1, and you'd have to pay £18/day in the congestion zone.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2022-04/Final-TS...
Being interested in/annoyed at the price of new cars even as a second-hand car buyer is somewhat justified
That said, if the EU car industry falls over completely*, there's no longer a reason for protectionist trade rules, and the EU then gets the benefit of cheaper Chinese cars.
* Short-term, Trump's tariffs and the significance of the US as an export market to several major EU producers are bad; long-term, China's actually really good at this and out-competing all western production, US and EU. Just like the chicken and egg, which comes first of "governments stop protecting the industry because the industry is important" and "the industry stops being important because the government stopped protecting it" is… well, "stop assuming all eggs have to contain chickens": there's plenty of ways either could fail independently of the other, but when it fails, the mutual support goes with it and it stays down.