The words of the Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Reyes Maroto, on the prices of electric cars have not gone down very well with the most supporters of the zero-emission car. Maroto said in the Congress of Deputies that they are currently “very expensive” and that he hopes that in the coming years they will become cheaper so that in 2035 they can be bought without “any problem”, and the Business Association for the Development and Promotion of Mobility Eléctrica (Aedive) understands that the statements are detrimental to the Government’s objective of reaching 5 million electrified vehicles (electric and plug-in hybrids) in Spain by 2030.
Also consider that they go against the sector itself because they can confuse citizens with a negative view of electrification, even leading them to delay their purchase decision. In this sense, from Aedive they explain to La Información that the most sensible thing to do is to compare electric cars with their most similar models in combustion, at least in CV of power. “In doing so, the price differential is minimal and in some cases, it goes in favor of the electric model,” they stress.
At present, there are electric models that are below 30,000 euros without having aid. For example, the Nissan Lea has a price without aid of 28,200 euros. This is a vehicle comparable to the 150 hp gasoline Volkswagen Golf, which has a market price of 34,620 euros. Another example would be the Smart #1, a new electric SUV that is comparable in combustion to the Volkswagen Tiguan. “The price differential between the two models is 3,500 euros in the PVP in favor of the combustion one, which cannot be described as very expensive,” they highlight in Aedive.
Likewise, aid to purchase an electric car can reach up to 8,000 euros, taking into account the mandatory discount of the brands. The third edition of the Incentives for Efficient and Sustainable Mobility (Moves) program includes a line of aid for individuals and the self-employed with up to In the event that an old vehicle is not delivered, the aid may reach 4,500 euros. For their part, plug-in hybrid or extended-range hybrid models – at least 30 kilometers in electric mode – have access to aid of 2,500 euros, which rises to 5,000 euros if another car is scrapped.
“You have to take into account the total cost of ownership of the vehicle… The electric one is much cheaper in use”
“Apart from this, it is necessary to take into account the total cost of ownership of the vehicle, for which and during its useful life, the electric vehicle is much cheaper to use, due to the advantages they offer from a fiscal perspective, urban access and parking, compared to combustion models, regardless of aspects such as maintenance and fuel, which increases the advantage in favor of electric compared to vehicles powered by fossil fuels”, highlights Aedive.
Various analysts agree that the parity of sales prices between combustion and electric cars will arrive around 2026, almost a decade before reaching 2035, the year from which the sale of new combustion vehicles (gasoline, diesel and hybrid). “Given the ban on the sale of combustion cars since 2035, enormous confusion has been generated that has spread to the public and that few care to clarify. Electric mobility today offers a solution to a good part of the public in and their mobility, but if there are those who are not quite convinced, they should know that as the Dutch MEP Jan Huitema, who wrote the report on the revision of the EU CO2 standards for new cars and vans, has clarified, the new Norms do not mean that all cars on the road have to be zero CO2 emissions in 2035 and that they do not affect existing cars”, they defend from the association directed by Arturo Pérez de Lucia.
On the contrary, from the pattern of the Ganvam sellers they take a very different position and indicate that the electric ones “are not accessible to the majority today.” “We are forgetting that mobility, in addition to being sustainable, must be affordable. Therefore, you cannot do a pole vault and go from a 14-year-old combustion vehicle -the average age that the Spanish fleet has- to one electricity directly. A person who drives an old car doesn’t do it because they want to, but because they can’t change it,” says its general manager, Fernando Miguélez.
Miguélez focuses on the fact that the oldest and most polluting vehicles must be removed from circulation and replaced with efficient technologies as an intermediate step towards total electrification. “Among other measures, the effectiveness of the current aid plans must be improved which, today, I insist, are aimed at a minority. Hence, we advocate the incentive to purchase a vehicle of up to five years of any technology of generation as a measure to bring efficient mobility closer to the most configured incomes, while the electric one matures”, defends the manager.
Euro 7 emission standard
On the other hand, Maroto also inaugurated last week the forum of the employers’ association Anfac ‘La Movilidad de Tod@s’ and its president, Wayne Griffiths, took the opportunity to convey to the Executive his concern about the Euro 7 emissions standard In his opinion, it will only mean a “marginal improvement” in the reduction of emissions compared to Euro 6 and will remove investments in electrification to be able to adapt combustion vehicles to the new requirement. “It does not focus on the real problem of air quality, which is a fleet of old vehicles,” he argued.
The British executive will warn that it will cause an increase in car prices of 2,000 euros on average and will put the competitiveness of the Spanish automobile industry at risk by affecting the smallest models, which are those manufactured in national factories . “If this regulation is put in place, we are in real risk of closing factories and losing thousands of jobs in Spain,” he pointed out. The sector thus denounces that it has to invest in combustion models when they already have an expiration date, instead of focusing efforts on zero-emission mobility.
“The new mobility needs a strong automobile industry that considers the zero-emission vehicle part of the solution, and not the problem,” stressed the also president of Seat and Cupra. Some brands have already announced their intention to stop selling combustion cars in 2030 and the European industry adds an investment of 250,000 million euros in electrification.
In Spain, as this medium has published, the automotive industry is facing a key decade for its transformation towards the ‘net zero’ road drawn from Brussels, but this continues to be a utopia in our country. In this line, the sector seeks the support of the Government to accelerate electrification through a plan based on three pillars: charging infrastructure, the penetration of electrified models and taxation. These are the lines of action in which the automotive industry demands more attention from the Executive to promote the purchase of a car, whose sales do not even represent 10% of the national park, when in other countries such as Portugal (26.8%) or France (25%) are already a significant piece of the pie.
