Electric Cars Italy 2023: Data released by Motus-E, about the first six months of the year, tell of a +31.93% increase in electric vehicle registrations over last year and a circulating fleet of 200,000 full-electric cars.
The best-selling model was the Tesla Model Y, followed by the 500E and Tesla Model 3.
“Italy is having its best year ever in terms of electric registrations,” and yet, as Francesco Naso-secretary general of Motus-E points out,“we remain a long way from the market share levels of the countries we aspire to compete with.”
That of electric vehicles in our country is a growth that weighs, if considered as an absolute value, but becomes timid if we compare it to the European situation.
Nevertheless, e-mobility continues to be the subject of harsh criticism.
In the face of yet another convoluted reading of the state of the art, our CEO Alberto Stecca has come up with a lucid analysis of today’s automotive market situation. Appreciated and also taken up by Sole 24 Ore.
Happy reading.
“We are giving away our automotive market to China.”
“Switching to electric cars will lose 70,000 jobs.”
“Full electric cars cost too much”
“Nobody wants electric cars.”
In recent days, reports and research have been published that present a very detailed picture of the e-mobility situation but which, as is often the case, is interpreted contrary to what the numbers say.
Research produced by the Fleet&Mobility Study Center tells how average car prices have risen from 18,000 euros in 2013 to 28,000 in 2022.
But since new registrations of electric cars in Italy weigh only 3.9 percent (figure as of the end of June 2023) it is clearly not possible that they are responsible for the increase in the average car price, there must be another explanation.
The Study Center, in an article, attributes the increases to the fact that automakers are raising prices on endothermic cars to “finance investments on electrification, which are huge and of dubious return.”
This could very well be the reason, but there is another, much simpler explanation: automakers have long ago decided to switch to producing only electric vehicles, even before that 2035 deadline set by the European Community, and are therefore now in the midst of a “milking cow” phase, that is, artfully raising the prices of endothermic vehicles, playing on the urgency effect given by the 2035 deadline, to take advantage of a shrinking market anyway.
Automotive market shrinks, electric cars to blame?
Not least because at the same time or almost at the same time as the increase in prices of endothermic cars, the exact opposite is occurring in the electric car segment. Not only has Tesla been lowering its prices for a few months already, achieving record quarterly sales in return, immediately followed by Ford’s price reductions these days, but it is the whole industry that is seeing steadily falling prices. In the U.S., prices have already dropped 20 percent in the past year, and Europe will follow (as it did with Tesla).
Already, the market is shrinking. New car registrations in Italy have fallen from 2.2 million cars registered in 2008 to 1.3 million last year. Fewer cars registered means fewer cars produced. Could “fewer cars produced” be the cause of declining jobs in the industry?
I believe so, and it is certainly not the fault of electric cars that automakers have reduced their production in the past 15 years or relocated production abroad.
Manufacturing in China and its effects
I also recall an oft-quoted analysis by Bain, which points out that “from 2015 to 2022, Chinese auto production rose from 27 percent to 33 percent of the world total, while European auto production fell from 24 percent to 19 percent, losing 5.3 million units and related workers.”
Yes, we have been giving away the endothermic car market to the Chinese for more or less 10 years now, and maybe it is time for European manufacturers to get a move on before they miss the big opportunity given by the shift to electric mobility. But it is the inertia of Europe and European manufacturers that has led to these market shares, it is certainly not dependent on the electric car.
On the other hand, “the Cuba effect,” that is, the gradual aging of the vehicle fleet, is true. If the number of transfers of ownership (used cars) has followed the trend of new registrations, settling from 2013 to 2022 with a few exceptions at around 66 percent of total registrations, it is clear that the percentage weight of very old vehicles has increased a great deal, especially for those with 10 or more years of life. But the increase in purchases and sales of very old vehicles is certainly not attributable to the prices of electric vehicles, when it is now clear that it is the endothermic ones that have been seeing rising prices for years.
The role of used cars in the car buying and selling industry 2023
And if the excessively high price of new vehicles prompts a move toward the used market, the choice of such older vehicles may also be dictated by other factors. For example, the desire to wait for more affordable electric vehicles to arrive while investing as little as possible for a vehicle that is considered “transitional.” Others may have turned to such older vehicles in order to later use them to access incentives with scrappage, where it is required to have owned the vehicle to be scrapped for at least 12 months. Or the fear that a new endothermic vehicle will depreciate too much as we approach the fateful date of 2035.
Conclusions
It was not “the regulator who pushed the industry into the corner on electrification, heedless of the devastating impact on jobs,” as has been written, the European auto industry is getting into it on its own. And if anyone thinks Tesla is getting it wrong when it plans to double its Berlin plant to 1 million electric cars a year produced in Europe, I’m afraid they’re in for a rude awakening.
Probably too late.
Alberto Stecca, CEO Silla Indutries
