2023 Irish EV Sales

One concern around that is whether published charging performance then becomes a contractual factor - ie, if the performance is later reduced through a firmware update due to an oversight within the BMS... but yeah, should be standardised alright.

Also some cars don't get near the theoretical charging speed due to no preheating etc...

I find the charging is too fast anyway, can't sit and have lunch/dinner in peace as always have to move the car off the charger as it's ready before me. Car is often ready before the McDonald's or burger king is even served.

Warranties are only good when they are acted on.

no idea how good BYD or Tesla are with warranties

Is that 20k BEVs?

Found/remembered the stats page.

https://stats.beepbeep.ie/

Any examples?

are we talking BMW iX and Mercedes eqe/s?

Charging at any motorway lay-by just got even more exciting in '23.

Things are getting better, far more planning applications for charging hubs than ever

They just need to get better a lot faster

I'd say the biggest obstacle at this point is people who are reliant on public charging.

There's a few doing it and hats off to them, but there needs to be a big improvement in urban areas so people without home charging can be confident they can grab a charge during their weekly shop

Oddly enough the model 3 did well for tesla in July, and sales number are up year on year, but it’s actually having its worst year in the Irish market share - it’s the 40th most popular car in the 2023 sales chart by model.

Spotted my first new generation Prius today, it's a fine looking Ioniq clone 😂

I was checking on VWFS today to see how many organs I'd have to sell when my PCP contract is up

It said I'm close enough to the end to order a new car

They even have a nice term for it, you're "renewing you contract" with a new car, and a new pile of debt to boot 🙄

There's a lot of folks getting to the end now and probably trading in. VW don't really have any equivalents so if you have an ID.4 and need the space your only options are another ID.4

Well, there's the ID.5 and the ID.Buzz, but there's no way I'd get enough money from my clapped out liver and kidneys to afford one of those

No, if I was to trade in for the same price I'd have to accept a fairly large downgrade in spec, which seems pointless

I think I'll be paying off the loan ASAP and keeping the car for another 3-4 years

I'll have to bite the bullet on depreciation, but in every other respect the car is extremely cheap to run, and the cost to change isn't worthwhile

the current policy is to reduce the incentives on EV’s (as a means to force price competition maybe), rather than increasing taxes on ICE. That’s not changing any time soon.

the unknown around residuals is a big point. depreciation was originally negligible when volumes were low, but now that volumes of 2nd hand EVs hitting that magic 3 years old , depreciation is very heavy.

if you’re a low mileage driver (in my case my fuel savings versus 100% home charging would be €800 Pa), the EV version of a car is still far too expensive.

Also, and probably a bigger point, not everyone who is buying a new car cares about cars in general, nor EVs. they buy a Yaris Cross hybrid and get on with their life.

edit: there’s still a huge unknown around out-of-warranty EVs

edit: only a small fraction of people can afford a new car. Most people want the cheapest car they can buy with a warranty - Dacia’s success here is a great example.

Cupra is massively overpriced and over rated brand. The proof is probably in the group decision to end the SEAT brand. Cupra was introduced basically as a premium SEAT, but now its just a replacement, but at premium prices compared. imho.

I drive a SEAT.

What's the story as in why is it a success, or how quickly can I buy one?

For why it's a success, I guess VW have a lot of brand recognition here and the ID.4 is well suited to Irish drivers (what with us being on a comparatively small island)

For Germany, I guess to be 100% clear the ID.4 plant isn't winding down

For starters, there's two plants in Germany, Zwickau and Emden. Zwickau is still at capacity and Emden capacity got reduced from 3 to 2 shifts. There wasn't actually ever 3 shifts, the plans to move to 24 hour production got delayed

The reason is there's more supply than demand at the moment. Partly this is because the US plant started production recently, resulting in a lot more productive capacity

Partly it's because state incentives for EVs in Germany for commercial customers wound down, resulting in a drop in demand

Partly it's because Germany is now in a recession with customers being more unwilling to make expensive purchases

And finally it's probably largely because the Tesla Model Y is the best selling car in Europe at the moment. Tesla's advantages are far more pronounced in Europe IMO with things like the Supercharging network and Autopilot being more valuable for very long road trips

Does that mean there's price cuts incoming? According to VW bosses, no

But we've seen lots of 0% finance offers, scrappage deals and sales events happening recently, which are effectively just price cuts by a different name

So how quickly can you buy one? Well if you're willing to ring around some dealerships, are somewhat agnostic about the colour and spec, and have your deposit ready to go, you could probably be driving one in a day to two

The mG4 is doing very well!

great to see an affordable car from a non traditional manufacturer climbing the ranks.

Anyone buying a car these days is going to be even a tiny bit ‘EV curious’, but they’re probably still too expensive for most buyers - people can’t magic money into their pockets, and interest rate changes make repayments quite a bit more expensive. coupled with the data showing the current depreciation would make a lot of potential buyers adopt a wait-and-see attitude.

sticking just to EV’s for a sec, there’s not many 2nd hand sales happening that aren’t priced to sell.

It’s a circular convo we have here every day :)

Similar story here - i have low mileage Taycan 4S ad’s selling in the sub €90k range now, but there’s a few long term private ad’s still looking for €130k, like it was still a difficult car to find. They just haven’t come to terms with crystallising the loss yet I assume.

Its the same story with almost all private ads of newer EVs (people who bought the dream of a car that mightn’t depreciate) - whereas garages will cut their losses far quicker and get it off the lot