Sales of Volkswagen electric cars have plunged by almost a quarter in Europe as demand for battery-powered vehicles stalls and buyers return to petrol. The Telegraph has more.
Electric vehicle (EV) sales fell by 24% in the first three months of the year as high inflation and rising energy prices dampened demand.
Globally, all-electric sales at the owner of Audi, Skoda and Porsche dropped by 3% to 136,400, while sales of combustion engine cars climbed 4% to nearly two million.
The drop-off in EV demand comes as politicians in the region rollback subsidies and reconsider ambitious targets to dump petrol and diesel cars.
In September, Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, pushed back a deadline to block new petrol and diesel sales in the U.K. from 2030 to 2035. Incentives for drivers buying new EVs were scrapped in 2022.
Data suggest that demand for petrol cars is rising faster than for electric models in Britain.
EV registrations were only 3.8% higher last month than they were a year earlier, according to figures released last week by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, while petrol-engine sales rose 9.2%.
Volkswagen sells some of the U.K.’s most popular electric vehicle models, including the Audi e-Tron range and Volkswagen ID.
Worth reading in full.
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Clearly the general public are not buying either the climate change scam nor the inferior electric vehicles that go with it.
I have a petrol VW. The equivalent all-electric model costs £10,000 more – roughly 35% more than mine.
That’s the battery.
Someone who owns an EV told me the lifetime cost of ownership should be lower or the same in an EV because they have fewer moving parts, less to go wrong, less vibration. I doubt that’s the case but even if it is, I wouldn’t now buy one on principle.
Fewer moving parts in an electric engine, but it still has all the moving parts an ICE vehicle has.
But the thing that evidently can and does go wrong is the battery. And that is expensive.
Indeed
After a cursory glance this tool suggested TCO was a fair lower for an ICE vehicle of my type/size with my mileage: Electric Vehicles: Total Cost of Ownership Tool – Data Tools – IEA
This is all very well but the UK currently has a Zero Emissions Mandate (ZEM) whereby every year an increasing proportion of vehicles sold must be EVs or large penalties will have to be paid. Is the industry/consumer simply going to bite the bullet, drive petrol and pay the penalty? If Starmer gets in as PM? is he going to put up with people continuing to drive petrol?
To go back on the ZEM would require some serious back-tracking on climate legislation, is any UK Gov going to do this? It seems unlikely, especially when we are starting to get legal rulings on the need for Governments to take action on climate change.
I have no idea how this will all play out? but it does look like a serious climate change collision point.
BEVs need electricity. If there is insufficient being generated, if the grid cannot carry and distribute the increased load demand, BEVs will be useless – just like ICEVs would be if there were no petrol or diesel.
When demand on the grid reaches a critical point, load-shedding takes place. That means power is turned off in various sectors for periods of time – and rolling black outs become a feature.
Keeping in mind the increased damand will also be for the heat pumps, and from businesses switched from using natural gas an all electric energy supply is impossible, no mater how many mandates, prohibitions, subsidies and political fantacising.
Sir Looney-Labour-Leader will be faced with a population who cannot drive either ICEVs or BEVs, and have continuous power cuts.
How will it play out – like CoVid… it will sort of fade away… we must move on and put it behind us. Yes let’s have an enquiry, but really it was nobody’s fault.
We will be driven off the roads – couldn’t resist – because that has always been the intention. One way or another this will happen. Our country will be bulldozed to destruction and we, the citizens will be locked into 15 minute cities without need of personal transport.
In order to ‘build back better’ first they must destroy. We are not talking policies here we are talking fundamental, wholesale and largely unimaginable changes to human life on this planet.
At time of writing three down-voted this perfectly reasonable comment.
Why?
IMHO knuckle-dragging bone-heads.
Why? ———–Probably because they believe all the climate hogwash and think it is all about science. —–Nope it isn’t.
LOL – two of the three found this comment – at the time of writing 2 down-votes and 29 up-votes.
Good to know on that basis only 7% of the population are knuckle-dragging bone-heads. Albeit 7% too high.
It would be great to have a cartoon depicting knuckle-dragging bone-heads to post every time downvotes are experienced.
Anyone skilled in the creative arts up for it?
Is any UK government going to do this? Yes because reality will come and bite their arses. —–The real world has a nasty habit of changing your opinion.
“… and buyers return to petrol.”
Did buyers leave petrol? Apart from the ‘more-money-then-sense’ muddle (sic) class, celebrity virtue signallers and fleet operators (now ruing the day) was there a mass shift away from petrol that I missed?
Demand for petrol & diesel cars has been rising for decades, and with relatively so few sales of BEVs, how can demand for them be rising faster when very few people can afford one even if they wanted one?
Some years ago a US company launched what it thought was the perfect dog food, good nutritional balance, well packaged, competitive price, great ad campaign, but after initial success, sales fell. They couldn’t understand it.
They called in a marketing expert and he said the reason for the product’s failure was… dogs don’t like it.
My firm and doubtless many others offer access to schemes where you can lease EVs through the firm for less than market rates because it’s subsidised by the taxpayer. I suspect a lot of the fleet operators are catering for that market.
The wheels (and doors) are falling off the clown car.
The clown has taken offence and exacted his revenge.
Brutal.
And all this despite the almost exclusive promotion of EV variants on TV, in the press and on billboards.
As Margaret would say « you can’t buck the markets »
No doubt some leftie lunatic will tell us the ICE vehicles are “raaaaascist”
Oh dear, what are the eco socialist governments to do now? ——-I can see more bribes coming along just shortly. ——Roll up roll up get your new EV and get 2 weeks in Florida and 2 thousand spending money where all the family can see Epcot and Magic Kingdom ——–OK OK hold on make it 5000 spending money and a years free electricity. —OK OK OK, Get 2 weeks at Disney for the next 10 summers, no electricity bill for 10 years, and we will chuck in 2 e bikes, 2 sherry trifles and a Red Velvet cake from Marks and Spencer, and if that isn’t enough then you can go f..k yourself, because we are going to ban your petrol car whether you like it or not.
….. and triple Nectar reward points of course
!