Strong start to the year by Hyundai, overall car sales are up 9.39% on last year with a 36.5% increase in EV Sales. BEVs were 13.46% of sales for Jan.
I see a parent at the school gate in a Peugeot E 2008 , really impressive looking but only one I’ve really spotted
MG 4 is certainly not a “ city car” , it’s as big as a VW golf
I suppose Ford and even Vauxhall were strong competitors in the UK so the likes of the Passat and even Golf were never as dominant as here
That being said, VW are clever and don't they make money on both ends of the deal, since they have their own bank? (At least that was my understanding)
It's a nice enough car alright, but the EV version is something like €9k more expensive than the petrol version, so unsurprisingly it doesn't sell very well
No doubt Peugeot are making a tidy profit on it 😕
I also wonder how easy it is to actually get one, for a decent EV they really should be selling more
VW in general always seemed to be less popular in the UK compared to Ireland, but they're really not pushing the ID.4 over there very well
For some reason the T-Roc is the most popular VW there, which I guess is proof that English people just hate happiness 😂
I'd forgotten about the e208. Good to see Peugeot releasing an EV version of a mainstream small car. It's a decent looking car and if Peugeot can make it profitable then surprising Ford, VW, Hyundai and Kia etc can't also make it work. Hopefully MG4, funky cat and other Chinese manufacturers entering the small EV sector will put pressure on other manufacturers to accelerate their release of smaller more affordable cars.
Are the Fiat 500, e Honda, Zoe , e-up, 208, funky cat, mg4 not all city cars
basic economics would say start with the cars that give a bigger margin and as production capacity increases move down to the lower margin cars.
Quality analysis re BIK rules where OMV comes into the equation and focuses the mind even if the employee wants EV or PHEV.
About small cars, another thought could be manufacturers are deeming the 'city car' not only low margin today but a long term loser as city councils promote car free cities, bicycles and .................... communism in general ;)
Was checking the list of top ten selling EV,s in the UK for 2022 and ID4 doesn’t even make the top ten
A significant downside to EV transition in the short term at least. While better packaging was being touted as a significant advantage of EVs, thereby allowing better internal space for a smaller external footprint, the actual reality instead, for the time being at least, is that manufacturers are eschewing the previously popular city car sector and focusing almost exclusively on producing ever larger EV SUVs.
Great for people who need space but unfortunate for urban settings, already clogged with cars. It's amazing how the very nagative attitude to the Chelsea (ICE) tractor has been quickly forgotten with people clambering to get into increasingly larger and more powerful EV SUVs. Unless this trend is reversed, we may well be thanking the Chinese for stepping in to fill the void left by almost every incumbent manufacturer at this stage.
Ford are apparently dropping the Fiesta too so small cheap cars seem to be a problem alright.
Should have went with a focus size car
The A1 is going so I presume the Polo is going too? I was thinking they might drag out the current generation until the Id All comes in a few years.
I think that's down to the emmisions rules as well, it's easier to meet standard with an automatic because you remove the driver's bad gear changes from the equation
VW were recently complaining that if the next round of changes to the Euro 7 rules go ahead then they'll have to stop making the Polo because it'll be unaffordable to make an automatic one
They do like to moan a lot 😏
On the petrol front, a lot of manufacturers are pushing automatic petrol transmission setups and more and more people seem to be getting into automatics so that could be a small factor.
One thing it's worth remembering about Ford is they operate almost like 2 different companies in EU and US
US is mostly pickups and large SUVs
EU seems to be vans, CUVs and small hatchbacks
So it's quite possible for them to operate two platforms, one for US and one for EU, at least temporarily
Yes, Ford announced that collaboration nearly 4yrs ago now and said they would deliver a car based on it in 2023 so they are on time with that!
This explorer seems to be the first one they are delivering using MEB.
There are rumblings that Ford want to ditch MEB and develop their own in-house platform, but that would take years so I'd say the explorer, and maybe another car, will be it from Ford for the next few years in terms of BEV's. Better than nothing I guess.
True, I hadn't counted it before but I guess every sale will result in a profit for VW as well as Ford
Could it be the BIK rules? There was something earlier about how the changes to BIK for company cars this year was causing a lot of people to move back to petrol from hybrids or BEVs
It's also worth keeping in context that petrol was around €2/l around this time last year, and electricity was still comparatively cheap which drove a lot of interest in hybrids
I'm just guessing here, don't really have any data to back up anything. It'll be interesting to see what the industry analysts say
I see the new Ford Explorer will be based on the MEB platform as well......Ford Explorer EV Is A VW MEB-Based SUV For Europe Priced From $48,500 (insideevs.com) VW must be making a fortune from it
Google images can be deceiving, ok, Toyota and Hyundai suffered a drop, Toyota sold 1500 hybrid units less but 277 more petrol cars than last year, interestingly only 7 diesel cars this year,
Hyundai hybrids down 33% petrol up 100 cars or 6%, diesel down −16.80% BEVS up only 5% and phevs down nearly 50%,
I know early days, but its interesting.
I don't think anyone's doing deals at the moment. If anything the dealers are overcharging at the moment.
On the topic of VW, you definitely couldn't get an ID3 or ID4 quickly at any stage during 2022. There appears to be a lot more of them on the dealership floor since February so I expect sales will improve quite a bit this year. The same can be said for the Ioniq products.
I'd disagree that the T-Cross is a big car. More of a reverse TARDIS, looks big on the outside, tiny on the inside 😁
But otherwise I agree, the increase in petrol sales isn't what you want to see
I wonder what the nature of those sales were, did they shift over from diesel for example, or come from electric/hybrid. It suspect it's a lot of the former given the high prices of diesel last year
It's also possible there were some good deals to be had on petrol as dealerships were looking to shift stock. I've no evidence of that being the case, just a possibility
Speaking purely about VW, there were some pretty serious bottlenecks in 2022.
For example all their wiring harnesses were manufactured in Ukraine, and generally getting invaded isn't good for the export economy
But they're also bringing more productive capacity online, for example they've got Emden and Hannover manufacturing EVs as well now
I think also the whole "can't get an EV" in 2022 thing was slightly overblown. Certainly in the first half of the year the delays were pretty horrendous, but that seems to have shortened quite a lot
I suspect that a lot of folks are walking into a dealership expecting to buy a new EV that day and be driving away within a week. That just doesn't seem to be the reality anymore, ordering several months before delivery is the norm now IMO
There's also the crowd in the "want an EV that isn't a VW or Tesla" camp, who are probably having a hard time buying a car. It seems to be more of a case that you need to be in the right place at the right moment
Petrol car sales are up 39%, that's not the right direction and they are not all small car either, QASHQAI, FOCUS, JOGGER, and T-CROSS,
On the topic of 2023 sales, light commercial EVs are up to 310 from 146, mostly vans pushing the sales
Heavy commercials are up to 12 from 3, mostly electric buses but some rigid trucks as well
Still very small market shares, but they're going in the right direction
Probably just being pedantic but I was commenting on a view that there were no EVs to be bought at end 2022 but the market suddenly opened up in early 2023 with markedly improved supply coming on stream. Maybe I'm completely wrong but I would have thought that the majority of EVs supplied in 2023 to date were ordered in 2022.
I hope it isn't a fluke either, but we recently had the VW CEO commenting how he sees EVs everywhere in Ireland (he lives in Wicklow apparently). Presumably he wouldn't be quite as enthusiastic about it if he was only seeing competitors EVs
I think there's a few external factors affecting sales at the moment. For example VW have decent PCP offers on some EVs at the moment
Also with the grant dropping in July, dealerships are probably under pressure to get orders in the first half of the year
No doubt in August there'll be a bunch of people talking about the sales drop in July as the end of EV market growth in Ireland 😏
Well sales VTD of the ID.4 have nearly doubled versus 2022, so I think it's fair to say the supply situation has improved a lot.
Demand is still keeping pace with supply, so there's not much stock available to purchase. However there's still plenty of people walking into a dealership and picking up an order cancellation, then driving an ID.4 within a week
