Is the slowdown in sales of electric vehicles in Germany, the continent’s largest automotive market, jeopardizing the European battery industry? Concern is mounting within the German industrial union IG Metall, which, as bad news piles up for the sector, fears a lasting technological setback in this key technology for the future of the automobile.
Since the start of 2024, sales of battery-powered vehicles have slowed sharply in Germany (-16.4% compared to the first half of 2023), halting the momentum that started building in 2020. According to figures from the Federal Motor Transport Authority, published on Wednesday, July 3, 43,412 electric cars were registered in Germany in June, down 18.1% on the same month last year, following a 30.6% drop in May. If the trend that has been observed since the beginning of the year continues, fewer than 400,000 electric cars could be put on the road in 2024 in Germany, compared with 524,000 in 2023 – far fewer than manufacturers had anticipated until recently.
Stefan Bratzel, the director of the Center of Automotive Management at Bergisch Gladbach, said Germany is a special case in Europe, where electric vehicle sales are on the rise. “The rise of electric mobility is slowing down mainly in Germany. In the other European countries, the situation in the first five months of 2024 is different. Electric vehicle registrations are up 22.9% in France, 9.7% in the United Kingdom and 47% in Belgium,” he said. This decline is directly linked to Berlin’s elimination of the electric vehicle subsidy in 2023. Squeezed by budgetary problems, the government first eliminated the subsidy for commercial electric vehicles, then the one for private individuals. As soon as these measures came into force, demand collapsed.
But other, more cultural factors could also play a part in the current disenchantment with electric vehicles, such as the fear of de-industrialization in a country that has largely built its prosperity in recent years on the improvement of the internal combustion engine. For many of the subcontractors specializing in this type of motorization, often medium-sized companies spread across the country, the transition to electric vehicles has so far been a losing proposition, with numerous bankruptcies and relocations to Eastern Europe.
So much so that the leading opposition party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is now campaigning against the end of combustion engine vehicle sales in 2035, as mandated by the European Union in 2023, arguing in favor of maintaining “climate-neutral combustion engines.”
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