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Germany loses its leading position as the European e-car lead market to the United Kingdom
In Europe, electric vehicles are currently losing momentum. In the EU, EFTA, and UK, the sales of fully electric cars in the first quarter of 2024 are estimated by the Center of Automotive Management (CAM) to increase only marginally by 6% to about 460,000 units, and hybrid new registrations by 14% to 260,000 vehicles. This is greatly influenced by developments in Germany after the abrupt end of the e-car subsidy in December 2023. As a result, the country is also losing its position as the European lead market for e-mobility in terms of vehicle sales volume. While new registrations of electric vehicles here are plummeting by 14% to 81,000 units, the UK is recording an 11% growth to 84,000 units. France also reports a strong increase of 24% to 80,000 e-cars, closely following Germany and likely to overtake it soon. Even when hybrids are included, the UK leads with 127,000 new registrations, ahead of Germany with 126,000 and France with 119,000 electrified vehicles.
Trend towards Plug-In Hybrids
Overall, the growth dynamics of electromobility are shifting in favor of hybrid technologies due to economic challenges and restrained customer demand. While fully electric vehicles in the core automotive markets of China, Europe, and the USA only increased by 11% to 1.75 million units, plug-in hybrids grew disproportionately by 52% to 1.1 million units.
This development is visibly troubling many automakers. The market leader in electric cars, Tesla, reports a reduced sales volume of 387,000 vehicles (down 9%), and even BYD could only report a 13% increase to 300,000 pure electric vehicles despite significant price reductions. Among German manufacturers, BMW (+28%) shows the strongest growth. The VW Group (-1%) and Mercedes-Benz (-7%), on the other hand, are experiencing volume declines. For the entire year of 2024, CAM expects approximately 10 million electric cars (+11%) due to the tense situation, with about 6 million in China, 2.3 million in Europe, and around 1.3 million in the USA.
China is the Growth Driver
China is advancing electromobility the most as the largest automotive market in the world. Between January and March 2024, around 1 million electric cars and about 740,000 hybrids were newly registered, corresponding to a growth of 15% and 75% compared to the same quarter of the previous year. With an EV share of about 37%, more than one in three newly registered cars in China is either fully electric or a plug-in hybrid (Q1 2023: 31%). Hybrids, in particular, are enjoying increased popularity: while this drive type accounted for about 10% of new registrations in March 2023, it was already around 17% a year later.
The ramp-up of new electric car registrations is also slowing down in the USA. For the first quarter of 2024, CAM expects a level of about 265,000 electric vehicles, which corresponds to an increase of only 6% compared to the previous year. Although Tesla still has the largest market share with a volume of 167,000 (+3%), it is finding it increasingly difficult to defend this against stronger competition. While the company accounted for more than 62% of electric car sales in the same period of the previous year, it is now only 55%. In addition, plug-in hybrids are also increasingly being seen as an alternative to fully electric drives in the USA. Some manufacturers, including the domestic companies Ford and GM, have revised their electric car plans in favor of plug-in hybrids.
VW loses third place to SAIC
In the race for the third spot among manufacturers with the most electrified cars sold after Tesla and BYD, the Chinese automotive group SAIC is expected to outperform the VW Group, according to CAM estimates. SAIC reports a sales increase of its "New Energy Vehicles" – encompassing everything from electric cars to hybrids to fuel cell vehicles – of 48% compared to the same quarter last year, reaching 210,000 vehicles, of which about 150,000 are pure electric cars (+13%). This means that almost every third new vehicle registered (32%) by the company is fully electric.
In contrast, the VW Group is struggling with declining electric car sales, particularly in Europe (–24%) and the USA (–16%), and slips to fourth place with a global sales volume of 136,000 electric vehicles (–1%). Equally concerning is the still low and unchanged 7% electric car share of total sales. The Geely Group, which includes manufacturers such as Volvo, Polestar, and Lotus, is growing the most with a volume of 130,000 electric cars (+31%), completing the top 5. Since total registrations are also rising sharply (+35%), the electric car share remains unchanged at about 20%.
The other German automakers, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, are developing in opposite directions. BMW increases its electric car sales with around 83,000 delivered vehicles (+28%), boosting its share of electric cars to 14% (Q1 2023: 11%), outperforming the overall market. In contrast, Mercedes-Benz reports a slight decline in deliveries of fully electric passenger cars and vans to 51,000 units (–7%). This can be partly attributed to the phasing out of the smart fortwo production and partly to the also declining total sales (–6%). Nevertheless, Mercedes-Benz’s share of electric cars remains at a persistently low level of 9%.
What does this mean?
In the forecasts for the whole year of 2024, CAM expects around 10 million new electric car registrations worldwide (+11%). The Chinese market will play a leading role in the transition to electric vehicles, with nearly 6 million units and around 60% of global sales (+17%). In Europe, the contrasting developments of individual domestic markets and the lacking price attractiveness of electric vehicles are expected to have a dampening effect on new registrations. CAM projects about 2.3 million electric cars (+15%), with approximately 470,000 electric vehicles in Germany (–10%). The USA is in a difficult process of finding stability due to high political uncertainty ahead of the upcoming presidential election, with an unclear outcome. These conditions could result in only a slight growth in electric mobility, with 1.3 million electric cars (+8%).
Translated automatically from German.
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