Europe's carmakers on life support

European carmakers are planning to release “dozens” of affordable electric cars. Next year. Because “We are here to fight,” per Renault’s courageous CEO — the same CEO who bet on affordable hybrids and the bet is currently paying off. But yes, he’s here to fight for EVs as the industry faces, per the FT, an “EV winter”.

Apparently, not everyone is as concerned about the EV winter as Renault’s Luca de Meo. Volkswagen’s head of passenger car sales, marketing and after-sales, apparently, believes that “customer demand and political regulations are in sync.”

This is an odd statement. Because it was followed by this: “I hope that we’re going to see clear commitments and signals from politicians that the future is electric. And then I’m convinced we also see customer demand picking up.”

I guess we could forgive Martin Sander and all the rest of the good people at Volkswagen. They’ve been forced to function under great and increasing pressure. Something was bound to give and what has given appears to be coherent thought. You can’t say policies and customer demand are in sync and then follow that with hopes that policies have yet to become pro-EV enough to stimulate demand.

The very suggestion that European governments are not pro-EV enough yet, for its part, is quite frightening. If the current European EV policies are not 100% pro, then what does 100% pro constitute? EV purchase mandates for each and every household and company? Decrees for one person — one EV, regardless of age or driver status? Because the only way for carmakers to make up for all the billions already wasted on EVs is to have a literal surge in sales, which is not happening on its own.

But one Big Auto CEO is urging the surge. “Making a transition for [EVs] longer is a big trap,” Stellantis’ Carlos Tavares said this week. “When you make a longer transition, in fact, you don’t replace the old world by the new one. You add up the new world to the old.”

This is strange coming from Tavares, who was until recently a solitary voice of EV reason in a crowd of idealistic executives. It was Tavares who warned that the UK’s EV sales mandates risk hurting the industry badly, possibly prompting companies to leave for greener pastures or go bankrupt. It was Tavares who said that a rush into electrification would end in tears. Now, he’s saying the electrification is moving too slowly. Incidentally, BMW’s CEO just said that the 2035 ICE car ban is “no longer realistic”. As if it ever was.

Oh, and to go back to those “dozens of affordable models”, the amount of losses carmakers are going to incur on those could end up even more massive than previous “investments” in the technology. Just imagine how much it must have taken to make these models affordable — if, that is, they are indeed affordable in the sense of the word that regular people rather than Big Auto CEOs use. Thoughts and prayers for a deeply disturbed industry.