In this way, manufacturers try to compensate for losses from weak sales
The automotive industry in Europe is facing an “autumn of horrors”. This is the prediction of the German professor Ferdinand Dudenhofer. While car sales in Europe are falling rapidly, the prices of petrol and diesel cars are rising significantly.
In order to somehow compensate for the huge financial losses, European car manufacturers are increasing the prices of cars with an internal combustion engine. A team from the research center in Bochum found this out by tracking price developments over the previous months.
It turned out that
The 20 most popular gasoline or diesel cars have risen in price by up to 10 percent since April
In the case of the most important electric cars, the increase is much slower – on average less than 4 percent. However, this value is an average and does not reflect the current market situation, where many car giants have promotional offers on their electric models because they have a lot in stock and it is difficult to sell them
But why are cars with an internal combustion engine selling more and more expensive?
“It seems that a strategy is being pursued to slowly reduce the price gap with electric cars thanks to the increase in the prices of petrol and diesel cars,” Dudenhöfer explains.
According to him, car companies have chosen a solution when, instead of offering even higher discounts for electric cars, they significantly increase the prices of classic vehicles.
“Important major car markets such as Germany and Italy were already in a slight deficit in the first eight months of the year,” German newspaper Bild quoted the 73-year-old expert, who founded and headed the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) since 2000, as saying.
According to him, in the countries of the European Union together with Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, by the end of the year there will be only 10.7 million registrations of new passenger vehicles. That meant that
about 200,000 fewer cars will be sold
from last year.
But the bad news doesn’t end there. As Dudenhofer points out, sales of new electric cars have continued to decline since August. Compared to the previous year by about 90,000 units (minus 8.3 percent). By the end of the year, this difference may grow to 140,000 cars per current.
The outlook is not very favorable.
“The coming months will be very difficult for the industry. More difficult than they were during the crisis of the coronavirus pandemic”, says Dudenhofer, who estimates that
the situation will begin to improve only in 2026.
It is based on the fact that after Volkswagen and Stellantis, which makes brands such as Opel, Peugeot and Fiat, other car companies will also cut their profit forecasts. According to the expert, the forecasts for Germany as an automotive country are particularly gloomy.
“We are betting too much on the Chinese market. There, however, sales of German cars are falling sharply,” concludes Dudenhöfer.