European new energy electric vehicle data analysis in May

Introduction: The data of new energy vehicles in some regions of Europe have been released. Surprisingly, in France, Spain and Italy, three regions with severe epidemics, the overall new energy vehicles have recovered quickly. Norway, the Netherlands and Sweden have remained stable overall. After the data of the UK and Germany come out, we can see the overall picture of Europe in May. This time, with the special automobile subsidies in Germany and France tilted towards new energy vehicles, we can still see the two governments' demands for the volume of electric vehicles. This money is used to support domestic auto companies to continue to increase investment in transformation, and to help domestic auto companies transform. This article will also check and sort out the detailed composition of French vehicles.

01
New energy registration data for some major European countries that have released data

 The sales of new energy vehicles in major European countries have been disclosed one after another, as shown below:

France 7176 (up 78% year-on-year), Spain 1116 (down 29% year-on-year), Italy 2992 (up 89% year-on-year), Sweden 3131 (up 9% year-on-year), Norway 3482. We can see that new energy vehicles in France, Italy and Spain recovered faster than traditional vehicles. This is partly due to the incentive of subsidies, and partly because it is relatively easy for car companies to promote sales under a low base.

Figure 1 European countries that have released new energy vehicle sales 

We can take France as an example to further explore this reversal process: 

1) The epidemic has a great impact on the demand side of automobiles in France. As shown in the figure below, the original demand of about 200,000 in France has been reduced to about 100,000, almost halved. In the first five months of this year, France's 31,200  BEVs  and 12,800  PHEVs  had a significant impact on overall emissions. It can be seen that the decline in carbon emissions from January to February was mainly due to the large volume of BEVs, while the carbon emissions from March to May were achieved through high penetration rates under a low base. 

Figure 2 Overall passenger car sales and emissions in France 

2) Therefore, from a statistical point of view, pure electric vehicles increased by 89.24% year-on-year, from 16,500 units to 31,200 units; PHEV increased by 96.98% year-on-year, from 6,556 units to 12,914 units; and hybrid vehicles also maintained a 13% growth, maintaining at 52,600 units. Diesel and gasoline vehicles decreased by 51.5% and 56% respectively. 

Figure 3 Powertrain situation in France in the first five months 

But we have to look at the car models carefully. If you observe the car models carefully, you can get some very interesting conclusions. Let’s look at the second part of the comparison between French and Norwegian car models.

02Comparison
of vehicle models in demand in France and Norway

If we look carefully at the sales data of the past few months, these pure electric vehicles and plug-in models are mainly French cars. ZOE accounts for 37% of all BEVs, and it is estimated that 208EV can also account for 22%. Add Tesla's 2,942 units (9.4%), and nearly 70% of BEVs are gone. The three French models of DS7 PHEV, 3008 PHEV and 508PHEV account for 42.8%. It can be understood that in order to meet Europe's CO2 carbon emission regulations, when many EU countries' markets have not taken off, domestic car companies need to occupy the market in their own country first, and then further expand the scale to increase the volume. 

Figure 4 New energy vehicle sales in France 

Therefore, we can see that the markets in France and Spain are similar. In warmer regions, small BEVs such as ZOE and 208BEV are not difficult to promote, and the volume is relatively easy to increase. Except for Model 3, the cost-effectiveness of BEVs in these two markets is still worse than that in China. The European government still wants to establish consumption habits through continuous consumer subsidies. Model 3 does not perform well in these areas, and consumers do not have a strong desire to buy Model 3.

Figure 5 Spain’s pure electric vehicle market

In the Norwegian market, the performance of Golf-BEV and Audi E-tron this year is also the result of Volkswagen's full promotion. Last year, Model 3 was delivered in Norway, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany and France, which attracted a wave of orders. This year, Germany and France, the two major countries with new energy vehicle sales tasks, will sell them in their own countries and relatively mature markets.

Figure 6: Sales of vehicle models in Norway in 2020 

Figure 7 Sales of car models in the Netherlands in 2020 

Through these inferences, the high stability of new energy vehicles in Europe in 2020 is actually inevitable. In order to cope with CO2 emissions, German and French car companies have developed and updated a new generation of BEV and PHEV, which were originally launched in batches at the beginning of the year, first locking in a part of company cars, and the strong stability of this part has caused a significant year-on-year decline in personal consumption. From the statistics of specific models, these cars are obviously following the previous design. They can have a large volume under high subsidies and preferential policies. Let's see what will happen in the Chinese environment. This is a bit similar to our increase from 300,000 to 700,000 in 2015-2017. From a few car companies to many car companies for concentrated promotion, they can always rely on their own networks to sell cars. 

Summary: I personally take a rational view of the increase in electric vehicles in Europe. This is a temporary situation in which the German and French governments want to alleviate the impact of the epidemic on the automotive industry (CO2 assessment may not be postponed) and cooperate with the two countries' automakers in their transition to new energy. There will be an obvious ceiling effect in the process of subsidy withdrawal or withdrawal.