Apropos of recent conversations, the July numbers are out for EV sales in Germany…and sales have fallen dramatically:
Registrations of battery-powered cars fell 37% in Europe’s biggest auto market to 30,762 vehicles compared to a year ago, Germany’s federal motor transport authority KBA said Monday. It’s the biggest drop since December when the German government suddenly scrapped EV subsidies. Sales of vehicles without a plug gained 7%.
Market share also fell - down to less than 13%, from 20% a year ago.
Electric vehicle sales in the U.S. grew by 11.3% year over year in the second quarter, reaching a record-high volume of 330,4631 units, according to new estimates from Kelley Blue Book. This growth was driven partly by improved availability, higher discounts and elevated levels of leasing. Total EV sales last quarter were higher than Q1 sales by 23% percent. In Q2, market leader Tesla sales volume declined by 6.3% year over year, but new products, notably from General Motors, helped lift overall volume higher. In the second quarter, Tesla’s share of EV sales fell below 50% for the first time in the U.S. to 49.7%.
Not very surprising - we’re in a different part of the adoption cycle, and the U.S. (unlike Germany) just made our subsidies more attractive. We switched to a point-of-purchase subsidy from a tax credit, which is much more user friendly.
Still, even if we could keep that up, at 11.3% year over year growth, we might get to 80% new car market share for EV’s by…checks math…the year 2046. Good, but not awesome.
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) - Comedy Tonight Scene (1/10) | Movieclips
The Funny Thing was AI coming of age with neural network technology just in time for Tesla to implement unboxed car manufacturing and the Optimus humanoid robot. Both the robots and the cars to be operated by neural network based AI.
The other Funny Thing is that Western automakers, after dismissing EVs, adopting EVs, and failing at EVs, gave up the market to Tesla and China.
An alert leader would recognize that it is the time for changing the game plan On the Way to the Future.
