The drive system transition is stalling in the German car market. Without subsidies, electric cars are still significantly more expensive than combustion engines. But it doesn’t have to stay that way.
On the German market for new cars, prices for comparable models with electric drives or combustion engines are slowly converging. The still significant price difference is narrowing, as the private Car Institute found in its regular discount study for July.
The basis is the so-called transaction prices, i.e. the amounts that customers actually have to pay for a new car after deducting all discounts on the list price. Since April, these prices have fallen by 4 percent for the 15 most popular electric cars, while they have risen by 5 percent for combustion engines.
Price differences still considerable
The price differences are still considerable, says study director Ferdinand Dudenhöffer. For example, a VW Golf with a 1.5-liter combustion engine costs 9,220 euros less than its electric brother, the ID3, with a transaction price of 23,443 euros. For the Opel Corsa, the difference is even more than 13,600 euros to the detriment of the battery model.
“No triumph for Chinese electric car manufacturers”
Dudenhöffer does not initially see the Chinese suppliers winning the market for electric cars. List prices are often not listed on the websites, and data and information are “often too insubstantial”. And the Chinese cannot “work magic” with prices either. This is shown by the price comparison of a model from the manufacturer MG, the battery version of which is almost 13,000 euros more expensive than the combustion engine version. Dudenhöffer also finds it remarkable that Tesla has for the first time offered a direct discount of 6,000 euros on the Model Y. There are probably larger stocks here.
Source: Stern
