The Electric Car Atop Europe’s Sales Charts Isn’t a Tesla or VW

I'm living in the Prague without car, only missing car when doing the grocery, but there is no point to buy car just to do big grocery once a week, might as well rent a car or take taxi or order grocery online, if I would be that lazy.

But also, the Zoe is is in the affordable range for people looking for an electric car in non-massively-subsidized markets (Norway, Denmark), while VWs and Teslas are rather in the luxury range.

The amount of car (utility & status & luxury) I get for Tesla or VW money in e.g. Germany, makes most prospective customers buy either an ICE (looking for a family car), or BMW or Audi SUVs (looking for luxury & status) - unless they are idealists or in search of image polish (business cars bring larger tax benefits for electric cars).

Then there are simply not much electric cars on the market that aren't in the Zoe-class in the first place (although several alternatives are bound to hit the market soon), besides very expensive SUVs and Teslas. And the regular e-Golf pricing is simply not competitive, for what you get.

So most people buying a Zoe is put very simply a "cheapest price will attract the masses"-phenomenon - given what people are looking for (an electric car, maybe as replacement for the smaller second commuter car).

Here is NL.

To give a very simplified but realistic stereotype: An upper-middle class family od two software engineers + 2 children will probably have one "premium" family car for sir (e.g. VW Golf or 3008) and one city car for madam (e.g. Aygo or Twingo)

I doubt there is much overlap with the ID3 too. The cheapest model will cost you two Zoes.

The base Zoe, with the 52kWh battery, is £30k/€33/$39k.

I recently bought my first car and would've loved to go electric, but nothing with decent battery size and boot size in my budget yet. I got a Passat GTE Sportswagon for now. All trips inside Stockholm I can drive on pure electric so I'm still quite happy.

Edit: I replied too fast. I looked it up on Wikipedia and the "purchasing power parity" isn't all that different between, say, Netherlands and Norway. So I can't really explain it.

Or possibly available credit and willing to use said credit. The UK is a bit of an outlier in terms of car spending when you look at its average wages, but the massive popularity of PCP loans probably explains that.

Norwegians are also higher income than the average European, of course, but that probably doesn't explain all of it.

In most of Europe, I think it's viewed as the only Electric car that's competitive on price against Internal Combusion cars. For a bit more, an eco conscious person can get city car with good range.

In Norway, where as I understand all IC cars now are luxury cars due the taxation, the Zoe is just one of many EVs to choose from. If it was me, I'd choose a Kona or a e-Niro over a Zoe, but I cant afford them (If they were even ever in stock). At Kona e-Niro prices... in my country... I'd choose a sporty semi-luxury car... Maybe Zoe is just in that Niche in countries that aren't (yet) heavily taxing IC cars.

But it's probably about the cold weather performance. Other cars charge faster, and that's important (even psychologically) in Winter. Other cars are also more efficient per km, so you're getting hammered by both in Winter - A car that uses a lot of kw/h per km in good weather does even worse in snow/slush and wind, and then leave you at the charger for longer!

The orignally Zoe and ZE40 models weren't great either, I think they lacked heat pumps too (even worse cold weather performance!), but while I'm only seeing Renault heavily push the Zoe to regular folks now, maybe the Zoe brand name has already been tarnished in Norway?

Wow to me this is bigger news, Tesla is #5 on the list.

I've also driven it from The Netherlands to France, 1000 km (621 mi). Then you get into a problem that the charging time from 10-80% takes a full hour, and it's necessary about 5 times for that distance. I personally still thought it was a fun trip.

They just don't share the same market. EV compete with ICEs alternative more than they compete with each others.

There is still range anxiety so anyone with an EV and living in London's suburbs will still want an ICE car for when they visit the relatives in the shires or go to their weekend retreat. The Zoe lacks in that area due to range. Meanwhile the Tesla offerings also fall short due to their size which is not what you want on country lanes or in city centres.

Parking at home and on-street charging is a problem so having an ICE and an EV is not practical in the way that it might be in a typical US city. There simply isn't enough space on the street.

Then there is public transport. This is good in London and out to the suburbs, you would want to get the train/Tube to get into London if you had an ounce of common sense, taking a car in is just silly.

The UK is not just London but then it is. There isn't a lot of money to go around in most regions. Plus commutes can be long, too long for range anxiety. Then the people with the money - the boomers - are sceptical about EVs. The UK is therefore going to be stuck with lousy ICE cars for a long time to come.