Deadlines have been the same since the beginning. All EU manufacturers have heavily invested in EVs, but they also have heavily increased their prices after COVID. Now they face 2 issues:
- less and less people can afford a new car
I'd like to add that the price increases are largely due to the increased demands regarding driver assistance systems, safety, and emissions control (the latter, of course, only for combustion engine vehicles). Five years ago, you could still buy a new small car for around €10,000. Today, this market segment has practically disappeared.
- people do not want EVs, which is an issue when your only investments were EVs
I wouldn't say that people fundamentally reject EVs. My driving experiences with such vehicles so far have actually been positive: very quiet, very comfortable, very smooth acceleration and stopping, and direct response from the drive system. I also have the option of installing a charging station, so I wouldn't be dependent on the sometimes absurd prices at public charging stations. But even with my own charging station, it will be difficult to save money on running fuel/electricity costs compared to a fuel-efficient combustion engine vehicle.
And while the technological development of combustion engine vehicles has been rather slow and linear, electric cars are advancing by leaps and bounds. The resulting technological obsolescence leads to very high depreciation. At the same time, repairs and insurance for these cars are very expensive.
This year I bought another combustion engine vehicle. Mainly because of the price (just under €26,000 and very cheap insurance, "full coverage" for about 300 Euro per year); a comparable electric vehicle would certainly have been at least 25% more expensive. But ultimately, nobody knows how all this will develop. Last but not least, the constant government intervention through tariffs and subsidies creates uncertainty that harms all market players. Those who could barely afford individual mobility until now will only be deprived of it again, while people with better financial means switch to ever larger automotive "tanks".
Still of topic for this thread but It looks like EU will relax their ICE ban, albeit only dropping to a 90% reduction to help divert the European manufacturers from their current path to oblivion.
It's obvious that this measure won't have any significant (positive) effect. They are just creating a smokescreen to temporarily calm the situation ... Reducing emissions by 90% is very challenging and practically only achievable with a hybrid drive (and a test cycle that delivers the desired result...). Perhaps they want to keep some options open for luxury cars and sports cars with "traditional" engines, but this doesn't benefit the average car buyer. If only a small percentage of the vehicles produced are allowed to emit direct emissions, most manufacturers will certainly have to ask themselves whether anything other than EVs even offers a reasonable return on investment.
Regarding car audio: I think it's good that at least some manufacturers are addressing the issue. My Skoda (VW group) is definitely rather underwhelming. After tweaking the (3-band) equalizer a bit, I'd describe the sound of the standard 8 speaker soundsystem as tolerable, nothing more. Considering that so much could be achieved here with DSP for relatively little cost, it's disappointing but not surprising. VW lags far behind the competition when it comes to automotive software. At least wireless Android Auto works 99.9% of the time in my car, which is an improvement over its predecessor.
www.reuters.com
