Monstrous investments and dozens of new models coming in, but the market is not ready. But manufacturers don't stop: that's why
The car no longer speaks of aesthetics, nor of style or speed. Electrification has been the watchword for at least a couple of years, but if until recently it was a hypothesis or a little more, now it seems that there is nothing else in the minds of manufacturers. At the Paris Motor Show, which closed on Sunday after ten days of (little) passion and (much) perplexity, it is impossible to take a step without running into a battery-operated car. And it is no longer only the small city cars that have cleared the customs of the genre, but everywhere "premium" cars larger and larger and more luxurious. The protagonists of the show are them: Mercedes EQC, Audi e-tron, Jaguar I-Pace. And it is the sign of a new era.
There are figures at stake to turn heads: Renault-Nissan's number one, Carlos Ghosn, has announced that for the Group's "Drive The Future" plan, 8 new electric models and 12 hybrids are expected by 2022, with investments of 18 billion euros. The others are aligned: 10 billion euros allocated by Mercedes (with ten models of the new EQ division expected by 2025), twenty for Audi in the five-year plan, six for Porsche by 2022, while BMW wants to achieve a quarter of sales in 2025 from "green" cars.
The problem for them will be to be able to sell them, given that on average producing an electric car costs 7,500 euros more than a traditional power supply, and a hybrid has a gap of 5,000 euros. In short, even leaving aside the perplexities generated by autonomy (now increasingly high) and charging infrastructure, is not imaginable a substantial reversal of the market trend. Which is responding well to the spasmodic race for electricity of manufacturers, but with an incidence still marginal. The challenge is, however, crucial: "What everyone must understand is that clean mobility is like organic food: it is more expensive", says Carlos Tavares, CEO of the PSA Group (Peugeot-Citroen-Opel-DS). "Either we agree to pay more for low- or zero-emission mobility, or we endanger the entire European automotive industry...".
But electric bulimia is obviously not a random choice on the part of manufacturers, some of whom are even preparing to accept to produce this type of car at a loss: "Volkswagen is going to launch a generation of electric vehicles that could have the same price on the market as traditional motor vehicles, and therefore without any profit," says Laurent Petizon, managing director of the consulting firm AlixPartners.
So what's behind this electric hangover? There are two real reasons: the first is called China. It is the world's leading market for car sales (almost 29 million units last year), but also the world's leading supplier of electricity (800 thousand in 2017, up 53%). It is therefore inevitable that the European car industry invests in China in electric vehicles seven times more than in the EU, 21.7 billion euros compared to 3.2 billion, according to figures prepared by the NGO Transport & Environment (T&E). Most of the investment comes from Volkswagen (a 10 billion joint venture with China's Anhui Jianghuai), followed by Daimlere Renault-Nissan.
The second reason is called CO2. Europe is setting ever more stringent emission limits, with deadlines, the first of which is already set at 2021, which manufacturers are unlikely to meet, and with very serious consequences if they exceed them. According to what has been established by the EU, in fact, the manufacturers will have to pay, for every vehicle sold, 95 euros of fine for every gram of carbon dioxide emitted above the established threshold. According to the calculations of the PA Consulting study, the Volkswagen Group could face fines of 1.36 billion euros, the Fca Group 950 million, which would fall to 787 for PSA-Opel and 430 for BMW, 307 for Ford, 283 for Hyundai-Kia and 126 million for the Daimler Group. Only a few would be able to avoid sanctions: Volvo, Toyota, the Renault-Nissan Group and Jaguar-Land Rover.
It is therefore inevitable to try to increase the share of its hybrid and electric production, even at the cost of zeroing the profit. At the same time, the spectre of a disturbing scenario, that of a Chinese colonization of brands, which is already underway and more and more likely considering the technology available to the Asian giant and the growing weakness of traditional manufacturers, weakened by regulations that they find it hard to bear, is distancing themselves. In Paris, in the pavilion dominated by Mercedes-Benz, there is the Chinese GAC, making its debut in Europe with a maxi-Suv and an electric concept with 595 km of declared autonomy. The space occupied by the GAC is twice as large as that of many European brands. It's no coincidence, certainly.
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