Daniel Fortin, editor-in-chief at Les Echos, speaks every day in the 7am newspaper to enlighten you on THE economic fact of the day.
This Friday, he looks back on the success of plug-in hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles in the first half of 2021, which represented more than 17% of new vehicle sales on the European market.
A first.
This is a record, more than a million electric or hybrid vehicles were sold in Europe in the first half of the year, a drop of 165% compared to last year and the movement is not ready to go. Stop.
Yes today these cars represent 17% of the total market according to an exclusive study carried out by the German analyst Matthias Schmidt that's a lot you said, out of this total 483,000 purely electric cars were sold alongside 528,000 cars plug-in hybrids.
The million has therefore been exceeded, this time the movement announced many times is really launched, another study by Alixpartners reveals that to date 330 electric or rechargeable hybrid models are being launched in Europe, it is considerable.
What explains this sudden acceleration?
Well the main reason is the regulations, since 2020 the European Commission has imposed very restrictive CO2 emissions standards on manufacturers, to meet these commitments they are forced to increase the number of low-emission cars in their range in order to reduce their average pollution, in addition to increasingly proactive policies. We must not forget that the electric car is in itself a heavily subsidized industry with many purchase premiums paid by governments, it must be said that Brussels announced this week a target of 100% zero-emission vehicles by in 2035, the deadline is very short and the target will be difficult to achieve,even with the progress recorded in recent months, we are still far from the mark knowing that in good years we produced 15 million cars in Europe.
What is preventing even faster development?
Well several things, first the prices.
If they have lowered the electric version of a given model remains 30% more expensive than the thermal version even after the premiums, then the weakness of the charging infrastructure, there is a lack of terminals everywhere in Europe, manufacturers are also pushing Brussels to impose constraints on the States so that they accelerate their investments in this field, the question of autonomy finally also remains a real subject even if the battery factories multiply in Europe, there remains therefore much to be done to make a success of the big automotive transformation announced.