Quarter figures: E-cars record records in the market share

Around every fourth car sold worldwide is a pure electric car or a plug-in hybrid from January to March. This is the highest market share ever measured in a first quarter, as an analysis by the advisory company PWC showed that the German Press Agency has in advance. Especially pure Stromer (BEVS) increased with an increase of 42 percent: in 40 analyzed markets – which make up the majority of the global new car sales – in the first three months of this year there were 2.7 million BEVS and 1.4 million plug -in hybrids (PiHs) with 16.7 million cars sold as a whole.

The development of the development was again China for pure streamers, which increased 55 percent to 1.6 million. However, the German car manufacturers lost the ground there and sold a third fewer cars. The fact that they were still able to increase in total by 38 percent owe, among other things, a strong development on their home market in Germany, where the electricity sales rose significantly after a long dry spell with an increase of 39 percent. Overall, too, it went up significantly in Europe: around 28 percent to 574,000 BEVS.

Tesla loses top positions in the admission statistics

In Europe, the models of German corporations prevail more and have partially replaced Tesla from the first places of the admission statistics, which they still held in the previous year. In China, models of the Chinese brands Geely and Wuling did the same. In the United States, however, the tech billionaire Elon Musk brand has still a firm grip on the market with Model Y and Model 3. In China there is no German model into the top 10, in the USA the VW succeeds with the ID.4 and BMW with the i4 in ranks 7 and 9 – but with a huge gap to the two Teslas at the top.

“Despite geopolitical uncertainties and growing trade barriers, the German carmakers have recently done their homework,” says Felix Kuhnert from PwC. “They are increasingly bringing competitive models onto the market and thus shortening the distance to the competition.” In addition, your “unconditional focus on quality and security” will help you, which currently win for many consumers – “also against the background of serious accidents of Chinese brands”. However, they would have to find ways quickly to reduce their costs and prices – especially with the batteries.

Secure supply chains for batteries

Jörn Neuhausen, Strategy &, which is part of PWC, also sees the batteries in great importance. In view of the global developments, among other things, it will be crucial how the European manufacturers assure their own battery chains in the future, “if batteries of Chinese manufacturers are in almost all electric cars today,” he says. “In order to become more independent here, Europe has to invest in its own cell production with force and focus and a corresponding supplier frastructure,” says Neuhausen. “In a market that moves at sales level in the billion to trillion range, this is of high economic importance.”