Spectator: Desperate manufacturers are struggling to shift electric cars
The real reason for hefty discounts on electric cars is desperation. Since 1 January, manufacturers have been under the zero emissions mandate (ZEV), which demands that 22 per cent of the cars they sell in 2024 are pure electric cars. Should they fail to reach this target, they will be fined £15,000 for every vehicle by which they fall short.
How are they doing? Not very well, it seems. In the first three months of 2024, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) electric cars accounted for only 15.5 per cent of the market – virtually unchanged from the same period in 2023. Moreover, the target is not going to stay at 22 per cent. In 2025 it will rise to 28 per cent, then in stages to 80 per cent by 2030 and 100 per cent by 2035. Unless electric car sales pick up dramatically in the next few months, manufacturers are going to find themselves with an enormous bill at the end of the year. The situation is worse for many carmakers than the above figures suggest because some carmakers, like Tesla, are already electric-only. That means that the sales being achieved by others must be well below 15 per cent.
It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Analysts were not expecting manufacturers to miss the 22 per cent target. Just last December, S&P forecast that sales of electric cars would surge by 41 per cent in Europe in 2024, and by 66 per cent in the US. In Europe, it was believed, EVs would be accounting for 22 per cent of the market across 2024.
Yet consumers are proving a lot more resistant to electric cars than the industry believed, with many citing the lack of charging points. Electric cars have established themselves as a premium project for well-off, environmentally-concerned motorists who enjoy access to off-street parking, but they are having serious problems widening their appeal to the mass market. There were recently reported to be 90,000 unsold EVs piling up in motor dealers’ forecourts in the US. Meanwhile, Chinese-made EVs are being diverted to Europe as tariffs of 27 per cent kept them out of the US. But the EU doesn’t want them either, and is also discussing punitive tariffs on Chinese-made cars – which isn’t exactly going to help Europe reach its decarbonisation targets.
For the moment, manufacturers are discounting the price of EVs, but in the coming months something is going to have to give. Either the government will relax the ZEV mandate as it has already relaxed other net zero targets – or manufacturers are going to find themselves in serious trouble.
When Big Government isn’t stealing from the citizenry, it’s sodomizing Free Markets.
And the bigger it gets, the stupider it gets.
And the stupider it gets, the more belligerent it gets.
How about telling the government that they are wrong and no one will cooperate. Too freaking simple right and actually requires real courage. Buddy, I think you and I are on the same page yet the terminally stupid are in control.
And so the government has created the conditions whereby the EV makers are having to discount EV’s to meet sales mandates. And what if they cannot sell these vehicles at the discounted price? And what if the discounted prices cause an actual LOSS on each vehicle sold?
What do you think this will do to the cost of ICE vehicles? Yes, the auto manufacturers will have no choice but to RAISE the price of each ICE vehicle. So despite the consumer speaking loud and clear … the government is interfering. The government is driving (sorry) up the cost of ICE vehicles as it is artificially lowering the cost of EV’s.
I can see a day coming when the price of used ICE vehicles spikes crazy high … when the cost of gasoline starts falling rapidly due to cratering demand … and it becomes far cheaper to fuel an ICE vehicle. Then … the government will have no choice (in their fascist minds) but to shut down oil refineries. The government will MAKE you drive electric … or ELSE!
“And what if the discounted prices cause an actual LOSS on each vehicle sold?” – like, do you mean, the $66,000+ Ford lost on every EV they sold last year? Irrelevant – we’re SAAAAAVING THE EARTH!!!
How many times do I have to say this?
It’s not a bug. It’s a feature!
This is all part of the globalist agenda to reduce our mobility, and keep us confined in square cubicles in over-crowded cities. All in the name of “Saving the planet.”
Of course, “saving the planet” isn’t the REAL objective.
And, the reason why the manufacturers are desperate is the the Jacobins and Bolsheviks behind such mandates are ramming down the throats of consumers an impractical and false solution to a non-existent problem that the states of the western world will ensure will not be physically possible. They’ll have to take ICE vehicles off the roads to get a little closer to their mandate and the Jacobins and Bolsheviks aren’t quite that desperate, yet. China smiles.
what should be banned for life is any form of liberal government
Obama is at the root of all these dumb ideas, net zero is bankrupting viable companies. There are no CEOs who will say this.
These ideas aren’t “dumb.” It’s malevolent, and it’s working!
Still no politician courageous enough to state the blatantly obvious – The King has no clothes!
What galls me most is that many of these bureaucrats and politicians actually believe they can defy the laws of economics and physics by decree. They should outlaw climate change/sarc.
They should outlaw government messing with its citizens and the free market, I thought it was the latter that rules the former, in a free nation?
Only a dictatorship runs the opposite way, which most nations have become, without its citizenry noticing, or doing anything about it, until it is too late, like the slowly boiling frog..
I heard a guy discussing his E Mustang with some guy in a parking lot. Guess what he likes? It’s really smooth. And quiet. And quiet and smooth.
And that’s about all he could say.
A performance car being quiet……no thanks.
” – And it’s real quiet and smooth – especially when the battery’s dead…”
was he wearing a dress
And a man bun?
This isn’t exactly good news…you know what’s coming next, don’t you?
MASSIVE.TAXPAYER.FUNDED.”INCENTIVES”
As far as I know Canada still wants all new cars to be zero emissions by 2035…that’ll help slumping sales.
Who be ‘Canada’? Not me, not my wife, not friends either.
No , not Canada. I think most Canadians don’t want to die because of a liberal government. I may be wrong but that is what net zero means, the death of billions. If people are so stupid they cannot understand what is happening, then they can die, I am not going with you on your suicide. The you is the editorial “you”. Sad that I would have to say that but most people actually think I am talking directly to them. I am not.
The youngest car in my driveway is 6 years old. The oldest is 30. Why would I want a car that’s batteries are only rated to last 5?
Now the State is going to put what is essentially a 25% tariff on every electric vehicle that already sold, and they think that somehow this is going to increase sales? Only a bureaucrat could think this up.
The tariff isn’t going to the electric vehicles- the liquid fuel buyers are paying it.
Five and seventeen in my driveway.
My oldest vehicle is 1988, the newest 1999.
Nothing older than unleaded, nothing newer than Y2K, is the sweet spot for those who don’t have to engage
daily in rush hour highway traffic.
Car phones, electronic key fobs, CD players, air bags, and especially computer screens all show how ‘modern’ features quickly ‘obsolete’ a vehicle over time.
The longest period an airbag was covered by warranty was in the MB’s of the 80’s – 15 years.
New age drivers wouldn’t think of buying/owning a car over 10 years old, so 2014
A 2014 Bentley Continental GT cost =/- US $220 k to buy then, sell as low as $25k now.
Spare parts become increasingly difficult to source when ‘upgrades’ are made every few years.
A good, independent, car mechanic is getting as hard to find as an available family doctor.
Boy oh boy, these planet-saving EVs are simply not going to sell to normies. We cannot afford them and we have no place to park and charge as more people live in high rise apts…. The insurance cost on EVs is too high, the driving range is too short … available chargers ???? Who knows where that’s going?
If the number of EV s ever reaches critical mass, electricity costs will go through the roof to offset the losses on gasoline tax. And your EV will be subject to hacking.
It’s a really good thing that climate change is not a big deal or we might actually be in trouble, but we’re not … We will adapt to the climate we live in … as we always have. The possible pollution-caused climate-change is largely a problem for China and perhaps India … if they refuse to participate which they mostly have … there simply is no point in destroying our economy and life-style to pretend we can affect the activities of the sun, clouds, wind, ocean currents …. we cannot
The alleged ‘Climate Change Crisis’ doesn’t exist, other than in the minds of globalists and stupid people. However, China and India remain, cesspools, nonetheless.
This fiasco is playing out like the production quotas that were imposed on factories in the Soviet Union. The quotas were always announced with much fanfare. Factories would routinely miss the quotas or else rush products through without proper quality control. Eventually, the central planners would fall back on an equally routine excuse like “crop failure” or “shortage of coal”.
When parking ramps begin collapsing, expect massive lawsuit against government and the carmakers that complied with this nonsense.
I don’t care how great the deals are. I am not buying one.
You may not have a choice. That’s the whole point. These dictatorial, authoritarian regimes wants to pick winners and losers, and quite frankly, who’s gonna stop them?
I’ll be dead then. They can bury me with my Ford F150.
The VW battery plant in Ontario is still going ahead?
Construct Connect online said it’ll cost $7 billion
Financial Post said it’ll cost $7 billion
Globe and Mail said it’ll cost $13 billion
Global News said it’ll cost $14 billion
Parliamentary budget officer Yves Giroux said it’ll cost $16.3 billion
Reuters said it’ll cost $20 billion …
Remember the Montreal Olympics? how about the federal gov’t gun registry only costing $2 million which ballooned to $2 billion lol…
https://distribution-a617274656661637473.pbo-dpb.ca/a3c5d4d96c20f870bb387b5acc23cef9aaffa368c8a7f704d6aff1f7a81fced1
Meanwhile, Toyota and Honda are making progress with hydrogen tech, while scaling back on electrical. Is the federal gov’t going to put their thumb on the scale to make it appear as though their public dollars investment is the better deal?
“you betcha” they will, like nobody saw that coming!
If it was my money being spent on next generation’s vehicles, I’d spend it where Toyota / Honda go, not on where Stellantis, VW, GM, Ford go…
Note that AB Premier Smith has been making the rounds touting hydrogen tech as the way of the future in the past week, the Canadian Hydrogen Convention was in Edmonton AB… so is the federal legislation mandating electrical vehicles going to not consider which is the better tech? No doubt if the #Libranos were still in gov’t for the next decade.
Funny thing is Ford had a workable version of both the Hydrogen ICE and Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicles more than a decade ago based on the Fusion chassis.
But those don’t produce government grants.
I like the idea of a hydrogen fuel cell, but guess what the largest GHG is in the atmosphere: Water vapor! AKA – Clouds!
Never heard of a Polestar before but looks like they are trying to dump them in Canada.
Polestar 2 Long Range AWD lease for $299/mo for 12 months with $1,522 down payment”
https://forums.redflagdeals.com/polestar-polestar-2-long-range-awd-lease-299-mo-12-months-1-522-down-payment-2688239/
The challenge for the POSs that rule us isn’t how to make us do what they want.
It’s how to make it seem that we have any choice in the matter.
The illusion of freedom isn’t an easy thing to maintain, even with complete control of the media, politicians, “globalist” corporations, and all majors NGOs.
Too many people still think that freedom is only a few years away when they can elect another set of puppets controlled by the same hands.
That VW plant is going to make “solid-state batteries”, which won’t burn down your house like those lithium ones do. The only catch is that the solid-state batteries are another one of those great start-up ideas that, er, haven’t actually been invented yet. Meanwhile, the 600 pound gorilla in the room continues to be the plain fact that Canada is pretty much uninhabitable by humans (except in stone-age hunter-gather fashion) WITHOUT fossil fuels.
I’m in the market for a vehicle now. There is no way in hell it will be electric.
To meet the quota they can rebrand scooters and skateboards as EV’s!!