Gas Car Sales Collapsing in China Now and Will Collapse in Europe By 2025

18 thoughts on “Gas Car Sales Collapsing in China Now and Will Collapse in Europe By 2025”

1. It’s not so much that electric car sales are skyrocketing, as that new gas car sales are plummeting. But the EVs are getting a larger fraction of a shrinking market.

   In the US, under 5% of new cars are electric, according to Car and Driver. And that’s after recent growth! EVs are basically a luxury good, still.

   The basic issue is that new ICE cars are now so expensive that most drivers simply can’t afford them. There’s no such thing anymore as a new entry level vehicle, regulations won’t permit affordable vehicles to be manufactured and sold.

   Don’t get me wrong, the new cars are fantastic products, technologically. They’re just unaffordable technological wonders. Thus the increasing popularity of golf carts…

   Most people are now limited to buying used cars; The wealthy buy new cars, drive them about for a few years, and then sell them to the used car market. This works out OK because modern ICE cars are good for up to a million miles if properly maintained, so even a used car at former new car prices is a reasonable deal.

   This reasoning isn’t applicable to EVs, though, because the battery is a large fraction of the cost of the car, and the battery is only good for 100-200K; When you buy a used EV, even well maintained, it only has a fraction of the remaining life an ICE car would have, without a major expense for a battery swap. Perhaps as much as $20K for a Tesla.

   The bottom line is that the auto market is being drastically warped by pathological regulation. EVs are benefiting from that, by design, but it’s not good for the general public.

   • If an EV can last 8 – 10 yrs, where do you think EV tech will be by then? You’ll be able to swap out your battery for a replacement and recycling streams will be set up by then. The battery will be 1/5th the price and last 4 times as long.
     The average trip down here in Oz is about 22km per day, you only have to charge once a week max. I forgot to say what do you think the range will be in 8 to 10 yrs as well?

   • https://cleantechnica.com/2022/09/21/surprise-nissan-leaf-batteries-last-much-longer-than-expected/

     Many will be amazed to learn that Nic Thomas, Nissan’s marketing director for the UK, told Forbes recently, “Almost all of the [EV] batteries we’ve ever made are still in cars, and we’ve been selling electric cars for 12 years. We haven’t got a great big stock of batteries that we can convert into something else,” he added. “It’s the complete opposite of what people feared when we first launched EVs — that the batteries would only last a short time.”

   • I’m curious what you mean by “the battery is only good for 100-200K”.
     Online 3rd party charts show Teslas losing on average 10% range in 300K miles, with half that lost in the first 50K miles. An ICE car that’s well maintained but with plenty of older parts probably loses about that same amount of fuel efficiency. And a modern ICE car getting 1M miles seems unlikely, unless you’re talking about a Ship-of-Theseus car.

     • Teslas can go a long ways long as it gets lots of milage fast, but the calendar life limits the health of the battery.

   • The FIAT 500 is sold in the US, and it shouldn’t be very expensive.

2. What happens to people who don’t have access to home charging? More and more people in the West are becoming renters, as home prices go out of reach. Apartment complexes and their parking lots are generally not set up for electrical charging, for the most part.

   • 2-ton EVs with a single driver are almost as bad as 2-ton ICEVs with a single driver. They take the same space, can’t be quickly recharged and are still more costly. America won’t allow the cheap urban runabouts available in China and most of the EU, etc. and not just for safety reasons either. The legacy automotive makers have made requirements so specific it only serves the heaviest autos, not matter how they’re powered.
     In dense urban areas like NYC, it’s almost impossible to own an EV; it’s hard enough to pay a second rent for a garage space but try finding an electric charger that A) works, B) is available, C) will have an attendant willing/able to hook up your EV overnight, monitor it and the charger, D) meters the charge to add to your bill (garages have to make money too and electricity isn’t free and you’ll have to pay for the labor too).
     On the road, chargers are frequently hard-to-access, buried in obscure and sketchy areas (one reason women adopt EVs at a lower rate than men), broken, slow (hi-speed chargers are rare, especially for non-Teslas). When did we all agree that chargers should not have the support of service station personnel? The whole self-serving charging model doesn’t work at half hour+ charging times. It requires a lot of charging stations for very few cars, leading to neglect, broken chargers and long waits during rush hour and other high-use periods. 5-minute refueling ICE vehicles don’t have this inflexibility problem.

     There’s a very long way to go and it’s not even clear America is headed in the right direction yet.

     • Exactly. There are many, many problems with the efforts to turn civilization from a gas powered one, into a electrically powered one. Sure, the problems you pointed out are real…but electric vehicles in my opinion just aren’t as fun to drive.

       When I jump on my bike, a Honda CBR 1000RR, I enjoy the mechanics of the clutch, shifting gears, and throttling at speed.

       • Try stream engines. Way more mechanical feel than a Honda bike.

   • I don’t live in the best end of town, and my local SaveMart isn’t upscale, but even they have a charge station. Turns out it’s really cheap to add chargers in store parking lots – a lot cheaper than building a gas station, anyway.

     Apartments will probably add them on their own too, if only to bilk their renters with an absurd markup.

   • “Apartment complexes and their parking lots are generally not set up for electrical charging,”
     That depends on the climate.
     Here in Calgary the outdoor parking spots have 120 V outlets for block heaters to warm up the battery & engine of an ICE car when the temperature is below freezing. That would be fine for charging batteries for plug-in hybrid vehicles. Given the distances in Canada & my doubts about cold weather performance of all battery vehicles, I don’t think I would want an all electric vehicle that would need a 240 V outlet to fully charge overnight.

     • Give up any hope of cabin heat, though; The range on electric vehicles shrinks dramatically if you’re using battery power to heat or cool the cabin.

       And the amount of power needed to charge an EV is hugely more than a block heater needs.

       • From Goatguy – he had some comment system problem —-

         You are on to something. I do not know if America really ‘leads the market’ (it looks like China does), but I feel a large-scale malaise taking hold of the economies of the Western world. Inflation — which really aught to be called monetary depreciation — is a huge factor.

         I know that many people (and it would be good to see actual statistics) have had their income rise somewhat in the last 2 years, ostensibly as an inflationary adjustment. Kind-of good feelings, now you’re getting paid 10% more. But oh the other hand, there is a positively stultifying heaviness to the sticker-shock of consuming. Merely ‘going out to eat’ is at least 25% and more like 35% higher — across the board — than it was 2 years back. Grocery stores are positively outrageous. Chicken and beef? Princely!

         So that 10% hasn’t even covered the other day-to-day increases. The Fed’s anti-inflationary push has raided incomes by indexing mortgages for those unfortunate enough to be on variable-rate programs. Cars as you point out are astoundingly high priced. The wife and I went this last weekend to a new Subaru dealership and left in awe. Sure, the cars are nice, but $60,000 nice for a big old station wagon equivalent? Really?

         Maybe it is as you say, pathological auto build-standard regulation. Maybe. It doesn’t really feel right … it feels more like inflation has taken a really large upwind chunk out of reasonable pricing. It is as if the auto industry has collectively decided that all that inflationary pay-increase largesse needs to be earmarked for the new consumers pocketbooks.

         AND maybe that is as it has always been, right?

         Being old enough to remember the substantial inflation of the 1970s, I remember car-sticker rises in excess of 70% over the 1970–1980 period. and those corresponded to 50-to–100% increases in peoples wages, similar price increases of everything from milk to dental work.

         So, maybe it is as it always has been. But it doesn’t feel happy: None of the optimism of the 1970s, with the ‘wow’ roll-out of new technological products and paired with remarkably high return rates for savings accounts at banks.

         Still … maybe I’m just whining: more than one of ‘the kids’ (millennials and late GenZ clade) in my little extended family-and-friends group (across the country) is working in the Big City (choose your poison) and is making over $50 per hour.

         Some, naturally: programmers, university graduated financial peeps, real-estate go-getters, medical-industry workers. Some, the ‘old fashioned’ way: plumbers, electricians, contractors, road-works equipment specialists. Some, a few, unusually well compensated: so-called executive assistants ($150k), Diversity HR specialists, and the like.

         BUT, a whole lot are not. Many are stuck working jobs that barely break minimum wage (about $32 k/y in the Bay Area), clearly not enough to venture out on ‘their own’ yet. Some, making surprisingly puny wages doing nursing assistance, grocery store clerking, all the usual run-of-the-mill jobs. Again … maybe is as has always been.

         Thing is though, that while I personally feel demonetized by the last 3 years of inflation (fixed income is SUCH an astounding pot-hole in the road thru retirement!!!), I feel a lot of the younger generation(s) are in economic quicksand. The ironically ‘good news’ for them though is that unlike their parents’ generation(s), theirs really is not all that much of a consumerist world going forward. Visions of spiffy kitchens, and nouveau-elegant living room appointments have been displaced by IKEA carp (wink), and outside-the-apartment services. One doesn’t even WANT an espresso-maker with there being an e-shot shop on every corner. One doesn’t NEED thousands of dollars in appliances … when at-home consumption is at an all time low. Thank you Door-Dash.

         So, maybe reflecting on my own words, maybe it really is ‘as it always has been’. We’re evolving, economically. The reality is murky, but still ominous: a whole lot of previously predictable consumption patterns are winking out, being replaced with unknown others.

         And the price of new cars IS astounding. It really is. Astonishing. And the electric ones aren’t any better than the ICE, if anything, worse.

         ⋅-⋅-⋅ Just saying, ⋅-⋅-⋅
         ⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅

         • Income inequality has seen a huge jump over my lifetime; When I was born, in ’59, we were in “the great compression”, possibly the lowest income inequality period in US history. By today, income inequality is as high as it was during the Gilded era, perhaps higher.

           A lot of things happened to cause that. But I’d focus on two factors:

           1) Most of the added wealth in America over the last few decades has been a product of capital becoming more productive, not labor. So, naturally, an ever larger fraction of the economic pie goes to the owners of that capital.

           But there are now a lot of barriers to ordinary people accumulating an ownership share in that capital, and profiting from it. For instance: The stocks we can buy don’t pay dividends, we can only profit from them by divesting ourselves of them! That’s decidedly different from the way things worked in the 50’s.

           2) The element of crony capitalism in the economy has increased dramatically, and it’s in the interest of government that the nation be divided between the poor and the wealthy, the middle class are not useful to the government. Too well off to be grateful for a handout, not wealthy enough to offer proper kickbacks to politicians.

           So every policy decision gets made on the side of increased inequality.

           • Capital doesn’t become productive – they just take more of the profit share from workers

         • Thanks for getting GG posted ,Brian.

3. Disruptive indeed. I think the ‘great switch over’ and the ensuing reversal in *everything* gas car related will be faster than everyone thinks.

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