Electric cars will lose out to internal combustion cars even in countries full of subsidies and regulations, KPMG warns, reality bending stops working

There is not much to debate here – with the prices of electric cars, the current prices of electricity and their announced future growth, electric cars are practically unsaleable in the Czech Republic. However, their situation worsens over time everywhere, even in the home of Dutch KPMG.

We probably don’t need to say again that the “electric revolution” is not going according to plan, it just isn’t. And she could never go, because the moment you decide to impose on people for more money a worse solution than the one they already know well, it really cannot be met with great success. From the point of view of the Czech Republic, we can be glad that we did not invest so much in a potentially dead branch of development, however much damage has been done and nowhere is it written that, despite a certain rationalization of the situation, tomorrow there will not be an even more absurd attempt to move in this direction, back step. In the Netherlands, where I spend about half of my life, the situation is quite different.

There, a lot fell on the altar of electric cars, first of all, a substantial part of one of the historically largest markets for new cars in Europe. New cars have been artificially made enormously expensive, if they are not emission-free to the eye, the taxes on their operation are brutal, the prices of fossil fuels have been artificially inflated to the highest level in Europe, you can get a subsidy for new and used electric cars, and I could go on for a long time. Nevertheless, it cannot be said that it would be such an electric paradise again – electric cars still have a very minor share of new car sales (this year it is about a quarter) and within the entire fleet they do not even represent 4 percent of all registered cars.

The Dutch still have a long way to go, but until now it was believed that it would somehow work out, because the conditions described above make electric cars relatively cheap. Or were they? According to the analysis of the Dutch (actually and historically dominant, formally today it is a British company) KPMG, a turning point has occurred in this case as well. According to KMP, the needle of the compass is turning, and analysts warn that electric cars are becoming less and less (meaning financially) attractive and, if the trend remains unchanged, they will lose out to internal combustion cars. They will be too expensive for people, despite all the market bending.

KPMG states that, despite all the above, electric cars remain significantly more expensive to purchase in the Netherlands, but the operating costs are, mainly due to tax discounts, artificially cheaper energy sources, etc., so much more advantageous to operate that it pays off. However, since KPMG does not believe that the purchase prices of electric cars will decrease significantly, electricity will become more expensive due to the “greendeal” mechanisms (which in itself makes it cheaper) and tax benefits are running out of money, a gasoline or diesel car will become cheaper again in the long term even in countries like the Netherlands.

The problem is also that people are running out of money. KPMG notes that the Dutch are increasingly critical of the purchase price of electric cars, however relatively similar – 66 percent of Dutch customers currently see it as a major problem, compared to 54 percent two years ago. And the analysis comes to the conclusion that no one will immediately do anything about these factors – both the price of cars and the macroeconomic situation.

KPMG therefore sees only two ways to stop the ongoing development. The first is the achievement of a lower price of electricity by the owners of electric cars themselves, for example by their own production through solar panels or recharging during off-peak hours. How effective and, above all, user-sustainable this is, will depend on a case-by-case basis. The second possibility is that politicians would stop steps leading to the reduction of artificial advantages. The future of electric cars has found itself in our hands…

Even the “clearly planned” electric future in countries like the Netherlands is no longer so clear. KMPG does not believe that only the artificially built financial advantage of electric cars is sustainable, so people will prefer combustion cars. Photo: Škoda Auto

Source: KPMG

Peter Miller

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