Also such a question in these harsh Corona times; what to do with electric driving? We now have some other concerns, but no matter how you think about the inky black crisis scenarios that we are envisioned, it can be guessed that a number of factors could seriously delay the electrification of the car.
Closing car factories, the buyer is in quarantine. The Chinese market has collapsed, with huge consequences for everyone, especially German car manufacturers, who turn from 26.9 (Daimler) to 38.6% (VW) of their turnover. Chinese production facilities of Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes, Nissan, Renault and VW were shut down. According to the bleakest forecasts, car sales in China could fall by a catastrophic 10% this year. VW recorded a record profit last year, but Mercedes was not doing very well anyway. Mercedes’ first full-fledged EV, the EQC, is an unparalleled commercial sof; in Germany, straps were fixed in January, but 75 were sold. VW is struggling with the software of the electric ID.3, thousands of which, according to German media, have been dumped with shadowy problems in a secret parking lot near Zwickau. Obviously, production schedules for EVs and their suppliers will be hugely delayed. And if the already inevitable recession really gets as bad as predicted, a new car is the last priority for a badly hit buyer market. We will have to recognize once again what we secretly already know; electric driving is currently prohibitively expensive for the people. The only relatively viable option is the electrified VW trio e-Up, Citigo and Mii. That is, and then largely through the private lease, completely sold out in the Netherlands this year. Furthermore, the EVs are not so fast here, we have seen. And after the adjustment of the addition system, Thun Two now follows with a thunderous timpanic strike.
This may also mean that governments have to adjust their transition schedules. How does a Europe, which now opens all floodgates for emergency aid, will free up a thousand billion euros for a Green Deal? Can countries afford to maintain their threshold-lowering subsidy programs in times of deep crisis after the pandemic has passed? Can they continue to force the stripped-down citizen with his back to the wall to conform to an ecological utopia? A fortunate side effect is the enormous CO2 profit due to the stoppage of business and commuting. NASA satellite images of the Wuhan region show greatly improved air quality in the affected area. This gives governments a grateful alibi for temporarily adding water to the wine. How they will do that is to look at coffee, but I see cities postpone their environmental zones and countries relax their CO2 regimes. I dare not place bets on the consequences for the EV. I predict they will be significant. How relieved the companies that are now investing billions in their struggles with politics and Tesla would be relieved. Soon they will say to each other in astonishment; that disaster was our salvation. Perhaps even the diesel defeated by medial headwind is still experiencing a small renaissance. In a world so completely turned upside down, the unthinkable becomes conceivable.