3 ms·

Germany had dropped subsidies and now demand has dropped drastically. Really unsurprising to be honest.

mschuster91 3y ago
Sure, capitalism wins here as usual - there has been well over a century worth of r&d to make insanely cheap ICE vehicles at scale. With electric vehicles, even Tesla doesn't have two decades (of which they spent a lot of time in small production) under their belt. Take away the subsidies and ICE vehicles win out again - there is no other way than subsidies to overcome the chicken and egg problem.
- constantcrying 3y ago
  Nonsense. EVs are expensive because of batteries, which have had R&D for a very long time. An EV isn't magic, it is still a car, much of the car R&D still applies.
- dzhiurgis 3y ago
  Depends where you live. If you got cheap power and expensive gasoline TCO of EV is no doubt less than ICE.
Toutouxc 3y ago
It's been five months. Do we have enough data to make conclusions? Did the people who were going to buy an EV in February, buy ICEs instead? Could they just be saving for a little longer?
- constantcrying 3y ago
  >It's been five months. Do we have enough data to make conclusions? Car sales are up, EV sales are down. I can't think of an explanation which is more convincing. >Could they just be saving for a little longer? For what? I can't imagine anything which would turn me more off from buying an EV than saving for one and then being told I now need to pay thousands of Euros more. Surely every single person who was saving for one has now bought an ICE vehicle they can easily afford. Of course many car sales are through financing and leases anyway.
VBprogrammer 3y ago
Electric cars are financially a lot of money up front for fairly minor savings long term. Which isn't so bad with interest rates in the 1-2% but with interest rates on car loans running around 8% it's a very difficult sell.
- constantcrying 3y ago
  Maybe, but the whole car market grew. If the interest rates made people avoid buying cars, it should apply equally. Porsche sold more cars than they did the year before.
  - VBprogrammer 3y ago
    It would need a more serious analysis to really get to the bottom of that but I think would hypothesise that electric cars being significantly more expensive than the equivalent ICE changes the dynamic slightly. It's harder to justify financing a more expensive product up-front in the hopes of running costs offsetting the cost later on when you have to pay significant interest on the difference. Also, supply chain issues and inflation on underlying materials have obvious had significant impacts on sales over recent years.
    - constantcrying 3y ago
      And obviously a very serious jump in prices, due to the removal of subsidies, makes them far more unattractive.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  Also there is to consider if those savings will vaporize at some point when government starts to search for more revenues. With ICE they are likely to stay static or go some up. With EV taxation and usage fees anything can happen...
  - dzhiurgis 3y ago
    NZ is great example, recently blessed with new government. EVs now pay same road user charge as 3.5 tonne diesel truck. There were some promises to start charging gas cars using same model, but right now an efficient hybrid pays 2-3x less in road user tax than EV. Still it's at least 2x cheaper to drive EV - power is super cheap here while gas is expensive.

Sure, capitalism wins here as usual - there has been well over a century worth of r&d to make insanely cheap ICE vehicles at scale. With electric vehicles, even Tesla doesn't have two decades (of which they spent a lot of time in small production) under their belt. Take away the subsidies and ICE vehicles win out again - there is no other way than subsidies to overcome the chicken and egg problem.

constantcrying 3y ago
Nonsense. EVs are expensive because of batteries, which have had R&D for a very long time. An EV isn't magic, it is still a car, much of the car R&D still applies.
dzhiurgis 3y ago
Depends where you live. If you got cheap power and expensive gasoline TCO of EV is no doubt less than ICE.

Toutouxc 3y ago

It's been five months. Do we have enough data to make conclusions? Did the people who were going to buy an EV in February, buy ICEs instead? Could they just be saving for a little longer?

constantcrying 3y ago
>It's been five months. Do we have enough data to make conclusions? Car sales are up, EV sales are down. I can't think of an explanation which is more convincing. >Could they just be saving for a little longer? For what? I can't imagine anything which would turn me more off from buying an EV than saving for one and then being told I now need to pay thousands of Euros more. Surely every single person who was saving for one has now bought an ICE vehicle they can easily afford. Of course many car sales are through financing and leases anyway.

VBprogrammer 3y ago

Electric cars are financially a lot of money up front for fairly minor savings long term. Which isn't so bad with interest rates in the 1-2% but with interest rates on car loans running around 8% it's a very difficult sell.

constantcrying 3y ago
Maybe, but the whole car market grew. If the interest rates made people avoid buying cars, it should apply equally. Porsche sold more cars than they did the year before.
- VBprogrammer 3y ago
  It would need a more serious analysis to really get to the bottom of that but I think would hypothesise that electric cars being significantly more expensive than the equivalent ICE changes the dynamic slightly. It's harder to justify financing a more expensive product up-front in the hopes of running costs offsetting the cost later on when you have to pay significant interest on the difference. Also, supply chain issues and inflation on underlying materials have obvious had significant impacts on sales over recent years.
  - constantcrying 3y ago
    And obviously a very serious jump in prices, due to the removal of subsidies, makes them far more unattractive.
Ekaros 3y ago
Also there is to consider if those savings will vaporize at some point when government starts to search for more revenues. With ICE they are likely to stay static or go some up. With EV taxation and usage fees anything can happen...
- dzhiurgis 3y ago
  NZ is great example, recently blessed with new government. EVs now pay same road user charge as 3.5 tonne diesel truck. There were some promises to start charging gas cars using same model, but right now an efficient hybrid pays 2-3x less in road user tax than EV. Still it's at least 2x cheaper to drive EV - power is super cheap here while gas is expensive.