Smaller EVs – the Path Towards Consumer Success

If you’ve been following me for some time, you know that I strongly believe that we need more attractive and smaller #electric #cars to make electric #mobility a success.

Some people may still suffer from range anxiety. Some people may think that electric mobility is too expensive. But recent studies agree that the biggest barrier to EV success are high purchase costs.

An immediate solution therefore would be to offer smaller (per se less expensive) cars. Currently, most available electric models are of mid or even large size. The hunger for smaller #EVs is huge though. The Italian government recently launched an incentive program for buying small cars, which cost less than €35,000 and exhaust less than 20 grams of CO2 per kilometer. It took the Italians only 9 hours to apply for the whole €200 million budget. The same happened with an EV incentive package in France earlier this year supporting the sales of small EVs. Here it took less than 2 months until the available budget was spent.

Apart from monetary incentives at purchase stage, many countries are coming up with other ideas when it comes to pushing smaller cars. In Norway all cars are subject to a purchase tax based on weight, CO2 and nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions. In France, a progressive weight-based tax applies to ICE and PHEV cars weighing above 1,600 kg. Other examples exist in Estonia, Finland, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

A new study shows that outside of Germany (where the average end-user still seems to be confused) pretty much no one questions the future of e-mobility. In all European markets (except Germany) the EV market is growing faster than the overall car market. Without Germany, the latter grew by 5.6% across Europe, the EV market by 9%. In France a staggering 23% more electric vehicles were sold last year than in the year before.

I’m convinced that with the arrival of attractive, smaller and therefore cheaper electric cars, we will also see an increase of the German sales numbers. Let’s overcome the continued misconceptions amongst the public – and go electric.