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Sales of so-called environmentally friendly electric cars have been slumping, despite all the Friday protests and loud cries for cleaner mobility.
Citing a report released by PricewaterhouseCoopers, German news portal t-online.de here reports how “suddenly demand is in the basement: even in China – the world’s largest market for e-cars – sales figures are collapsing”.
It turns out electric cars, with their long charging times, short range and surprisingly high CO2 lifetime budget, are still not attractive enough to consumers in these times of “climate crisis”.
Though sales have picked up in Germany somewhat, but that it’s still “at a very low level,” T-Online reports.
Climate protests, hysteria, fail to sway
Germany is one of the leading Fridays For Future protest countries worldwide, with tens of thousands of protesters turning out weekly. Yet that has not translated into any meaningful change in terms of electric car sales. People have not been swayed by all the climate hysteria and remain uncomfortable with all the technical and environmental drawbacks of plug-in electric cars. Read here.
Big markets dive
T-Online sees the really big trouble for electric cars elsewhere, that is in the markets where they have been traditionally strong: China, Norway and the USA. The German news site reports: “And that’s where the wind has changed, according to a report by management consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).”
Global: plug in electric fell 23.8%!
“According to the report, 321,573 battery-powered electric cars were sold worldwide in the third quarter of 2019. This is a decline of 2.8 percent compared to the previous year. Sales of plug-in hybrids even fell by a quarter (23.8 percent) to 102,097 units sold. There are various reasons for this,” reports T-Online.
Huge sales drop in China
T-Online reports that the world’s largest market for electric cars, China, “collapsed drastically between July and September 2019.” Adding: ” Sales of electric cars fell by 15.7 percent, of hybrid cars by 20 percent and of plug-in hybrids by as much as 27.3 percent.”
20% Q3 drop in US
Things are not better in the USA. Recently S&P Global reported: “Sales in the US plug-in vehicle market in Q3 2019 were down roughly 20% compared with Q3 2018, but year-to-date sales for 2019 were slightly ahead of sales through the third quarter in 2018.”
Future of electric plug-ins uncertain
Overall there’s growing uncertainty when it comes to the future of mobility and as to which technology will emerge as the most viable, and when.
Countries worldwide are woefully lagging behind in the installation of electric car infrastructure. Policymakers are thus uneasy about investing hundreds of billions into an electric car infrastructure, knowing that it may well be made obsolete by other fuels, such as hydrogen. Investment delays in turn lead to delays in sales.
