Tesla sales, market share dip in EU while other EV makers grow Tesla isn't just floundering in the US - new registrations of Elon Musk's electric vehicles have dipped in the EU and UK this year, too. Tesla Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg Engineers check their work at the Tesla Gigafactory in Berlin, Germany New vehicle registration data for June published by the European Automobile …
Hiking tariffs to absurd levels on Chinese cars and dissing them because they're Chinese can't stop people from testing them -- and discovering that they're remarkably good. As in "serious competition in price, quality and features".
All the tariff wall does is make people here (US) realize what a bunch of hypocrites our business class leaders are. One minute they're going on about the "free market" and "competition", the next, as soon as they experience the "free market" and "competition" they're going on about "unfair competition" and "government subsidies" and the need to put punitive tariffs (taxes, to you and me) on imported products.
"Hard truth but yes, it makes my skin crawl when I hear the lazy racism used by so many people who are blissfully ignorant of the fact that the device they're typing on is almost definitely made in China"
Which is why people need to be A) aware that China frequently abuses their own citizens and drives their economy forward with sticks rather than carrots. B) That their regime is focused on the expansion of the power base of the CCP and any opposition is brutally suppressed. C) People need to stop buying Chinese goods as long as A and B exist.
This post would be illegal in China as they have a law prohibiting any criticism of the government. Nor can you publicly display a photo of Winnie the Pooh.
Every component on my PC was not made in China.
Aside from my work laptop — which is purchased by my employer, not by me — I can't think offhand of anything I need which is manufactured in China.
I'll have to replace my refrigerator some day, but I believe there are still some manufactured outside China. The same holds true of any other major appliances: either they'll last as long as I do, or there are alternative sources, or I don't really need them.
I could live quite happily without a TV or smartphone. I can make most of the Chinese-manufactured goods we own myself, using tools I already own and which are likely to last the rest of my life, though in most cases I can just do without them.
I don't plan to ever purchase a new car again, so that's sorted.
I'm not particularly exercised about not buying Chinese-made goods; I have more important things to worry about. I'd like it if, er, other members of my household bought less unnecessary stuff in general, but that's a separate question. But if I were forced to stop purchasing anything made in China tomorrow, it really wouldn't be much of a burden, frankly.
"Every component on my PC was not made in China."
I actively go out of my way when buying anything to make certain it has the least Chinese content humanly possible for all the reason you list. Oh and the useful idiots as they are referred to by those scummy governments who gloss over the active targeting of literally everything produced by their fellow citizens in the West. Will come to rue the day when all their jobs and freedoms are gone if they succeed with that aspect of their conquest. They laugh at what fools we are for letting them get away with it for so long. Racists indeed, not so when calling out murdering bastards for being just that. Or to criticize their active war against us both on the land/seas/skies, space even, and in the shopping aisles.
Nope. The device I'm typing on was made in Greenock, Scotland in 9/6/96.
Hate to break it to you, but IBM in Greenock weren't moulding plastic and building keyboards onsite in 1996 or ever.
I worked for the competition (Compaq) in Erskine around that time and laptops came pre-built in containers from China (the OEM was Inventec as far as I recall).
The only work that was done locally to qualify as "Made in the UK" was the installation of hard disks and keyboards, and chucking them in a box
How many 90ths?
Frankly, I doubt it much matters how "good" Chinese-built EVs are. At least here in the US, it seems a very small proportion of car buyers actually do any research or much in the way of comparison shopping. I've seen some research to support that. On average, automobile purchases are made based on subjective factors and considerations such as cognitive exhaustion, not on any rational basis.
Even price and perceived value for money don't seem to factor in strongly.
The writing was on the wall for some brands as the subsidies started to be run down but price isn't the only consideration. The existing brands have had to rethink their strategy since the subsidies for hybrids went and EVs in general became less attractive: they're okay if you've got you're own electricity supply, otherwise they're more expensive to run than petrol cars. Those that do want an EV can look at the existing manufacturers, who can at least offer continuity and some form of continual improvement beyond software gimmicks, and the Chinese who are now established and increasingly familiar from the battery systems for solar systems get installed. The EU tariffs are closer to fair value and, with only 18% for BYD, not enough to close the market off. I know quite a few people looking to replace an existing EV and they all tend to think that companies like BYD make good cars at a fair price. Existing brands are probably also better placed to deal with a price war than Tesla, which does not have assets to justify its share price.
The days of the Giga Factory in Grünheide are also numbered as water shortages in the area become the norm: Tesla got special treatment in an area where it's no longer possible to build houses because you won't get a fresh water connection (Source 130 Liter on Deutschlandfunk).
I think we'll also see a reevaluation of the market in Europe as the problems related to a wholesale switch to EVs become more and more apparent, though probably not before we've spunked a couple of bilions on the hydrogen mirage: electric motors powered by turbines or fuel cells are what we will have to end up with.
Yes, but that's immaterial, government will introduce rules to force the market, whether you want it or not.
A good example is the UK, where car makers will be fined for every ICE vehicle they sell over a sliding percentage of total sales. Since the fines will be a whacking €17.8k per vehicle, no sane manufacturer is going to risk that, and will limit and soon stop ICE sales in the UK to avoid that. For context, the average profit margin per vehicle is around €6k per vehicle for Merc, BMW, JLR, and around €1.5-2.5 for mainstream marques. The last UK government got a lot of criticism from the green contingent for pushing back the UK ban on new ICE sales to 2035, but because they didn't change the EV proportionate mandate that fines car makers, changing the ICE ban date was only a paper gesture - but the greens not being the brightest, they didn't recognise that nothing had really changed. Obviously in the Eu context rules are different, and to an extent they'll be whatever the German car makers demand it be.
It doesn't matter for policy makers if your costs go up, they'll just come up with a "counterfactual" that claims your costs would have been higher if they hasn't forced you to have an EV.
I suspect (knowing a good amount about many of the technology options, but without doing the detailed numbers for my argument here) that if the proper analysis had been done in the first place, synthesised LPG using renewables would actually have been a cheaper and more efficient way of fuelling transport than EVs, given the T&D plus charge-discharge losses on EVs. But EV's have been chosen as a winning technology, you and I are going to like it or lump it. When the last UK petrol station closes, I shall have to cut a hole in the MX-5 floor, and power it Flintstones style.
How does this work for companies who just don't make any EVs? There must be some of them, especially smaller firms and racing cars. If I set up a small company and sold one custom combustion-engined car, would I have to bodge together a couple of electric go-karts to avoid a fine?
Could a larger firm simply buy up a manufacturer of kids' plastic ride-on toy cars and count them against their EV quota?
Well Ford did - wasn't that why they sold Escorts ? (in the US)
But this has been the mechanism for a long time: if you don't make the efficient one you have to "buy" the credit off someone who does. And it's a pretty good thing, manufacturers are forced to make small cheap efficient cars they would avoid making if they could.
It is conspicuous from housing that when the supply is constrained (sections for housing, buyers for cars - most people can only own one at a time) , then business tries to upsell and makes very little of what is cheap simple, and less profitable. They only get one bite - so they try to make it a big one.
Smaller makers don’t need to follow the same rules, I can’t remember the cut off but firms like Aston Martin don’t need to produce a full ev & have delayed their ev to focus on v8’s and v12’s.
They will wait till the very last moment and cash in on those petrol heads with money as they will likely be among the last of the manufacturers who can legally make ice cars.
https://www.motortrend.com/features/aston-martin-ev-delay-v12-phev-hybrid-sports-car-plans/
There's only so much you can force a market...
Governments have been known to make grand gesture moves like this with long deadlines, then relax or even remove the requirements when it becomes clear that the economics or industry advancement are just not achieving the goals they set out. Net Zero 2030 is likely to suffer the same fate as energy storage and low carbon baseline supplies have not spontaneously come into existence just because some politician made a big speech.
"There's only so much you can force a market..."
No, there's a limit to how successful it will be, but there's no limit to how much a government can and will force a market to get the outcomes it wants, that the market won't naturally deliver. In the UK, government pressed the regulator to increase competition in energy supply, there was no goal of making energy cheaper, of keeping it affordable, or ensuring that suppliers were financially stable. Now, it's simple choice time: hands up who wanted affordable energy from suppliers who won't go bust and leave everybody else to pay the costs? Now hands up who wanted more choice of supplier? Other government policy measures including coal phase out, renewable supply mandates, grid costs for renewables, on-costs like lower utilisation of CCGT that was and still is the sole backbone of UK energy generation, levies to give free boilers or insulation to landlords of poor people etc were all forcing costs up - as was competition itself, through marketing and switching costs.
The inevitable consequence of policy measures that increased supplier choice was first of all a mass of new entrants (at one time around 70 different suppliers of domestic energy). Because the policy was solely to increase choice there were no checks on the viability of new entrant business models, nor of their wholesale market hedging. So when we had Covid followed by Russia's war against Ukraine, around 50 suppliers went bust, and you and I picked up the circa £7bn tab for that. Whilst the two trigger events might not have been reasonably forseeable, there's always been occasional huge swings in gas prices - could have been yet another middle east war, a different pandemic, an "accident" affecting the LPG or oil export infrastructure of either Saudi or Qatar. I was working for a big six supplier in 2016, the whole industry knew then that as soon as we saw a wholesale market disruption, it was going to cause expensive chaos, but government pressed on.
Other examples that nobody voted for include policies to force housebuilder to construct dark, poky little newbuilds with no garden, the balkanisation of the railways, reducing the number of UK civil airports, promoting "choice" in fixed line telecoms so that customers are paying billions for overbuild yet without addressing the hard to serve properties. Or the move to digital voice which means gandmas phone won't work when there's a powercut. There's a huge number of things, usually not openly declared, where government forces markets to deliver what it wants, and you and I only have an illusion of choice.
Some one gets it!
When you stop and look for a second it’s clear, obvious and follows a pattern.
I’m always amazed the majority don’t see it.
Also amazed when people claim it’s a conspiracy theory when you point it out.
Classic example is energy billing, why does there need to be 70 companies providing billing services and how does inserting them between the energy generators and consumers make my bills any cheaper, answer is it can’t as they all need to make a profit and the generators don’t want to make any losses so consumers end up paying more.
It’s obvious yet many are willing to turn a blind eye to the obvious.
When I worked in the Lloyds insurance market, I wrote a risk analysis program which had different weighting, scenarios, impacts on the industry ( even if the syndicate said it was motor, it did have diversification.
Put in the expect and the real unexpected.
Though Lloyds was in its "reconstruction & renewal" phase after it's huge losses before - so was v aware of the nigh on impossible happening
You're probably right until the real problems associated with power generation and distribution start to manifest themselves.
And, fortunately, some manufacturers such as Nissan and Toyota are providing an off-ramp: electric motors – yes, but not battery-powered.
Synfuels driven by solar thermal systems are possible – the new test site in Jülich at least manages to avoid electrolysis – and adsorbtion could be used to drive coolers to catch the necessary CO2. Throw a couple of billion at this to produce domestic plants at a reasonable unit cost and let Northern Europe do its bit, when summer finally arrives!
Yes, it's nice to see automobiles with electric drivetrains and ICE electrical generation becoming more common. There's the Nissan e-Power and apparently the latest electric Dodge Ram pickup, for example. Electric drivetrains have attractive aspects, like the flat power curve and losing the weight and bulk of a conventional transmission; but hauling a shed-load of short-lived1 batteries around in exchange for poor range and long recharge times doesn't work for my use case. (By Monday I'll have done three 650-miles-in-a-day trips this month.)
When the ICE is generating electricity, it can stay running in the efficiency sweet spot rather than revving up and down all the time.
Unfortunately, I'm sure all of these vehicles will have touchscreens and other idiotic misfeatures, so I won't buy any of them. Oh well, more amortizing of the construction costs of my existing ones.
1By my standards, at least. I don't consider an automobile "old" until it's been on the road for at least 20 years, and it should still be useful well after 30.
At least you took the time to find out.
There is still too much generalisation from all sides when in reality it is currently more specific to an individual’s usage and location.
The general price difference is shrinking and for anyone with access to a company EV scheme, that can still skew things quite heavily in an EVs favour.
I had always dismissed getting an EV on the grounds that I had no access to home charging so it would be a nightmare and expensive to own one.
Last year I replaced my car with an EV. It took some time, effort and realistic honesty about my vehicle usage. The trigger was I’d been looking at cars in general and one of the few I actually liked happened to be an EV.
The public charging infrastructure around me has expanded significantly over the past few years and is rarely busy. The car I liked was available via the company scheme and even public charging is cheaper to run than my previous petrol car for my usage needs.
I had worked out based on pessimistic EV range figures, price parity for charging vs petrol would be ~85p/Kw with petrol at £1.40/l
Reality is I get better than pessimistic range driving normally so have lower monthly running costs and no need to keep a slush fund for those unexpected repairs.
Without the company EV scheme it would been more expensive as a private purchase, but having taken the risk which could have backfired, the extra vs my previous car would still have been cheaper than the various age related costs I knew were coming.
As for my next car when the company scheme ends, who knows, depends what is around and what takes my fancy. There was so little I actually liked on the market last year, it could be even worse when I need to think about it. On the bright side I do know any EV platform that matches or exceeds the Ioniq 6 is an option.
And that's fine that it's not attractive for you. But I can tell you in my use case I'm saving about €1500 a year with my ID3.
My use case it works. It will actually start saving me more, because we just got solar panels installed and once their online. I can effectively charge for free (minus obviously the cost from the installation of the solar panels.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is, that EV is terrific in specific use cases (own house, with own wall box, and reasonably priced electricity, which I think rules out most of the UK, and mostly city driving). In other uses cases, especially if you do not have your own wall box it doesnt make sense. But I'm glad the option is there. More options, means everyone gets to find the niche that's right for them...
"And that's fine that it's not attractive for you. But I can tell you in my use case I'm saving about €1500 a year with my ID3.
My use case it works. It will actually start saving me more, because we just got solar panels installed and once their online. I can effectively charge for free (minus obviously the cost from the installation of the solar panels."
Congratulations, you've just confirmed that EVs are toys for the wealthy.
In your "use case", someone needs:
- money for the downpayment on an ID3, and the ongoing monthly payments
- solar panels
- a property of their own (landlords aren't keen on letting renters make changes to their property), preferably with off-street parking.
Home charging is the thing. If you don't have that then you are in your scenario
Works for me and an EV salary sacrifice scheme makes it even more worth while
And no, not gone Tesla. Why get an old model when Hyundai, BYD, the big EU manufacturers are all now turning out damn good ev's with latest tech and updates ?
if I'm doing small miles every year my carbon footprint is way smaller if I buy an old Focus for £1,000-2000.
Where are the £1,000-2000 EVs? Oh yeah, that's right...they don't exist.
What price the future, eh?
What is it about EV ownership that brings out the smug twat in some people?
The description says it's got a range of 60+ miles per charge which suggests a fair drop on the original spec. And that might well be good enough for some people; it'd cover two days driving to work and back for me (or about two weeks for my other half).
You might want to read up on hydrogen storage and portabiltiy: pressure and cooling requirements. And, if it ever can be produced renewably and cost-effectively at scale from renewable sources, it will likely be converted to ammonia for transport, which sort of begs the question: why not produce ammonia directly? Oh, we do already from hydrocarbons. So, how do we avoid the inevitable black market?
Yes. Hydrogen is a pain to work with. Sure, if we have cheap energy in other forms (e.g. electricity from nuclear) we could electrolyse seawater and get as much hydrogen as we want; but it probably makes more sense to use that energy to synthesize propane from e.g. biowastes. Propane is much easier to deal with, we already have a distribution and storage network for it (even with facilities for selling it to end users), and existing ICE engines can even be converted easily to run on it.
Synfuels in general just make more sense than using hydrogen directly. Yes, burning them produces CO2. But the feedstocks are substances that will decay and produce CH4 and CO2 anyway.
The reason Musk tried to abandon the cheap new model and move to Robotaxi is that the growth story for Tesla as a car manufacturer has come to an end.
The stock market (particularly retail investors with little experience) believed the endless growth model where it was claimed Tesla would first dominate and then destroy the "legacy" auto manufacturers. This story gave Tesla a potential growth path to dominate market share of all vehicles sold (not just EVs). People were looking at Toyota's market share and then multiplying it by a silly number.
Buuut... not only have the mainstream manufacturers fought back with credible (if not insanely competitive) offerings, but Chinese manufacturers have taken Musk's vertical integration model and demonstrated they can outpace him. Teslas are less reliable and fresh than 'slow' mainstream cars, and more expensive than new EV entrants. No more growth model.
So Musk has lost all interest in being a car company. Existing owners don't seem to have realised it yet, but the Y/3 might just be the last mass manufactured 'traditional' Tesla and may see very poor long term support. If Robotaxi takes off there is little to no incentive to producing a normal car that cannot compete against rivals.
And for the moment, for Musk, it doesn't matter if Robotaxi takes off - it provides a vital new growth story that can keep the stock price high. I'm guessing we'll see a 'semi-concept' rolling vehicle in October with promises the software is "nearly there"... trials in 2025 and then endless delays to a generally available service. That should keep the story alive for at least five years, and the stock price exactly where Musk needs it to be.
Yes Musk has form talking about other businesses than cars being where Tesla could get its future growth. First it was all about Tesla's PV roofs, supposedly their solar shingles were so much better than PV panels they'd take over the industry. That was great for hyping Tesla's value when solar stocks were going through the roof. Ever seen a Tesla solar shingle roof in real life? I sure haven't!
Next he pivoted to batteries, and that was where Tesla could justify its inflated stock price. Now there are actually some products being sold there, so it is a better story than the shingles, but batteries are a low margin item and never a way to justify a car company having a market cap larger than all other car companies combined.
So then he pivoted again, to "AI", claiming that somehow Tesla had leadership in AI, despite not even being able to stop its cars from plowing full speed into stopped firetrucks on the side of the road. But when AI stocks first started really climbing a year or two ago that pumped up the stock value.
Now he's moved on to robotaxis, an oldie but a goodie, since he promised Tesla owners they could make $100K a year from their cars starting in 2020. I guess that promise is out the window, since Tesla is going to make dedicated robotaxis. It isn't clear if they are going to sell them to suckers to operate themselves, or if Tesla will operate them. Either way no one else - including those who have been at it for years longer than Tesla like Waymo and Cruise - are making money off their robotaxis, nor have they given any indication massive profits are on the near term horizon. But hey he goosed the stock price up by 50% so mission accomplished, I guess.
I wonder what his next flight of fancy will be?
oh wait, you are giving mountains of money to someone who is hell bent on destroying Tesla, EV's in general and all renewables? (Windmills give you cancer)
Elon has lost the plot big time.
For once, the Orange Jesus was right, if Trump gets elected then the US auto industry including Tesla is a dead man walking. China will rule the roost.
Elon does seem hell bent on killing his golden goose (Tesla). If as had been widely reported, he's got bored with Tesla, things start to make sense. Then there is his firing of key teams an threatening to kill the 4680 battery project if they don't get volume production by the end of the year. As the Cybertruck was designed to only use these cells, that could signal the end Tesla as we know it. He won't mind. He'' be in line to get billions in tax breaks from Trump.
As the delegates were waving 'Send them Back' at the GQP event, can they send Elon back to RSA? Please make it so.
I am guessing that Tesla will be assembling more cars in South America with parts from Tesla China - getting in with Trump ensures he will have a lane to do that. Cook also is/was good buddies with Trump, and Apple avoided the import taxes that others couldn't.
Pretty much all car companies now offer some kind of EV model. In a couple of years, it'll just be another choice alongside paint color (with EVs being much cheaper to run).
It's not surprising that Tesla is fighting competition now. There are other manufacturers now...
Tesla was the first to sell really big numbers of cars.
Then the competitors got active. They will inevitably sell a good number of cars too given it is really not that hard to make a decent car EV or not.
In that situation Tesla market share has to fall. even Musk knew that. He may be rather less of a genius than he imagines of course and his Self Driving ambitions still lead reality by a wide margin. For sure some do not like to buy from someone they regard as a total prat.
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No fleet manager will ship Tesla product.
After-sales service is near non existent and the asset values are not manageable when the pricing of Tesla is like a yo-yo.
Source ...a European fleet manager from another blue-chip company invited to speak to our Company a few days ago. Our own fleet will not supply Tesla for these reasons.
I'd order a Tesla model 3 if I could. Fleet won't offer it to us.
I'm assuming it's a simple matter of everyone who wants a Tesla already has one. I for one do not want to wait in line to charge up my vehicle. Plugin hybrid? Yes, i have a (120V) outlet next to my driveway and my day to day driving is low enough that the couiple miles of charging overnight is fine. Long trips? My Cruze has a 640 mile fuel range, i have no interest in planning my trips around where charging stations are.
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