Battery electric vehicles lose their spark in Europe as hybrids steal the show | Hacker News Reader

Battery electric vehicles lose their spark in Europe as hybrids steal the show

theregister.com

7 pointsrntn10 comments

> The decline in Germany was marked, with a 30.6 percent fall in new BEV registrations, although France recorded modest growth at 5.4 percent.

Important context: Until the end of last year, germany subsidised the purchase of BEVs with 3000-4500 euros. Now that is gone, so that might explain why the decline is so drastic.

I believe it's alike for Ireland too. If BEVs are not decently priced, consumer doesn't have much of a choice over the issue.

The purchase of plug-in hybrids was also subsidised (leading to reports of buyers who just collected the subsidy, but never actually charged their cars), so that doesn't explain why their market share actually increased.

...plus these are just the figures for May 2024 compared to the same month last year, which are not really that representative.

Is it because in the near future Battery Electric Vehicles are just more expensive than regular cars. Electric cars still seem to need significant government subsidies to make them competitive.

At least Hybrid cars reduce fuel use 20-35% which is good. And reduce C02 emissions by 60%.

I guess it will be a long time before all cars are electric. (but this is where we will end up in the long term future).

I think it’s also because plug-in hybrids make a lot of sense for Europe. In a Nordic capital, I refuelled (E10) my car in January, and that lasted me until June. I’m now driving across Europe, and I don’t have to worry about finding chargers or subscribing to a million different apps or services to be able to charge my car. I also only refuelled in June because of the road trip.

Interestingly, it has been more difficult to charge my car in southern France than in Transylvania.

This is what I see as being the fail. The fact that there is such a thing as the Tesla charging network to me is a complete fail. The fact there's a bunch of different apps I need to use, all requiring registration, is a fail.

With petro, you pull up to the station, swipe your card (or phone, or watch), and pump.

It's obvious the market has abysmally failed in solving this problem, so why haven't the governments, who've spent A LOT of money via the BEV subsidies, not seen this problem and regulate the entire process? I'm an American and so I understand why my dysfunctional and broken government is unable to accomplish this, but I'm not understanding why Europe finds itself in the same boat?

Maybe the market for electric cars starts to get saturated, at least for the current state of the technology? There are several criteria that play a role:

- price

- range (even people who make only a few long range trips per year, like me, might be dissuaded if they have to interrupt their trip for a long charging break - or buy a hybrid instead)

- charging availability - if you park your car on the street, you are dependent on public chargers; if you have a shared (underground) parking garage, which is common here in Germany, installing a charger becomes a lot more complicated than for homeowners.

Help me understand this thinking. If you're only making "a few" long range trips per year, then why would you base your car purchase on those trips? Why not simply rent a car for those trips and make your car buying decision on your daily driving needs?

Because renting a car, while it would probably make sense financially, is an additional hassle that I don't want to put up with? Especially if you live in a rural area, the next car rental may be pretty far away (and not reachable with public transportation), so it gets complicated fast. Getting and returning the rental car might even take longer than the break you need to take for charging, so you might as well take the electric car and use the break to rest...

Full disclosure, I'm an American, and one thing we've done very well is made it super easy to rent cars. You arrive, go to the lot and pick out your car, and drive off. They take care of the transaction when you go to get out of the garage.

Returning the car is just a drop-off. No interaction is even required.

As far as getting to the car, I use the airport's car rental. In the States there are HUGE rental car inventory at the airports. I either have someone ride with me to go out and get the car, so I can drive the rental back and they can drive my car back, or I just uber out to the airport. For reference, I live 30 minutes away from the airport.

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