Hopes for the mainstream adoption of electric cars have been punctured by figures revealing a fall of more than 11 percent in the sale of zero-emission vehicles to private buyers.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders has said that motorists are holding back from the switch because of continued uncertainty about whether a government ban on petrol and diesel cars will be enforced, the cost of electric vehicles, the cutting of financial incentives, and fears about the lack of a public recharging network. [emphasis, links added]
Ministers and the industry have previously hailed rising sales of electric cars as a sign that Britain is ready to move from the “early adopter” stage of battery electric vehicle (BEV) ownership to the mass market.
However, the number of electric cars bought by private owners has fallen from more than one in three of the BEV market to less than one in four in just a year.
Figures for the first half of the year showed a 32 percent surge in BEV sales to 152,000 cars, accounting for a sixth of all new registrations.
However, detailed data reveals that private motorists have stopped buying.
The vast majority of new BEV registrations this year — more than 75 percent — were with fleets and business owners, which can take advantage of company car tax breaks, the benefits-in-kind regime, and salary-sacrifice schemes, which means running an electric car attracts dramatically less tax.
In the first half of this year, 37,000 new electric cars were registered to private retail-buying motorists, or just 24.2 percent of all BEVs.
That is down from the 41,800 BEVs sold to private motorists in the first half of last year when retail buyers accounted for 36.3 percent of all electric car sales.
The fall coincides not only with the cost of living crisis but also with the scrapping of the “plug-in car grant”, which at one stage was worth up to £5,000 off a new electric car.
A report from the trade body, highlighting the stalled electric car private buyer market, said:
“A faster and fairer mass transition [to zero-emission vehicles] is threatened by the absence of support for private buyers, many of whom plan to go electric but are delaying due to concerns over affordability and uncertainty regarding the availability of a charging network.”
Speaking at the launch of the report, Alex Smith, the managing director of Volkswagen UK, said his company’s definition of an “affordable” mass-market electric vehicle would be its £21,500 ($26,738) ID.2 all-electric car due to launch in a couple of years.
That price, however, is more than 50 percent higher than the cheapest petrol cars.
Read rest at The Times
So will Der Ferrer still continue to try and force us to drive those EVs despite the poor sales of them and the WEF,UN,WEF Etc..
Reading Volkswagen and EV in the same sentence begs the question:
Are EV’s the “people’s car” ? I don’t think so, just the opposite. They are elitist pompoms.
Remember how Lee Iaccoca saved Chrysler with the K car, followed by the mini van? Many today are struggling financially. Now is the time for a practical, affordable vehicle . Brush off the old blueprints, Detroit.
Adolph Hitler came up with the concept of the “Peoples’ Car,” the Volkswagen. Germans were promised that every family would have a car, which was far from the case at the time. Germans paid money into an account that was promised to eventually go to the purchase of the car. In reality, the money was used to make tanks and people got nothing for their money. Today the situation is different, but with EV’s we have another program that is against the best interest of many families.
The digital order entry system checks obtainable inventory,
processes funds and routes orders to the distribution heart for
success. Abruptly the order entry system goes down.