The February edition of the schmidtmatthias.de West European Electric Car Sales Market Intelligence Report will no doubt be the final month of relative normality as the corona virus failed to impact European February registrations directly.
February recorded a 4 per cent mix of total West European passenger car registrations, leading to the 12-month rolling total just failing to breach 400,000 units (see: Fig. 2002/10).
In light of the corona virus outbreak impacting the European market in March this report's 2020 full year forecast of over 700,000 pure BEVs has been reduced in light of LMC Automotive and Moody's both forecasting a 21 per cent fall for the total West European passenger car market in 2020.
While this report's forecast for the BEV market has been reduced by 144,000 units to 556,000 (see page 6) crucially the 5 per cent market penetration level remains unchanged. A possible "BEVs for Bangers" scrappage scheme, designed to kick-start the European passenger car market being discussed on the sidelines of the industry currently would be hugely beneficial to the sector which would clean up the regions PARC far quicker than forecast. The only objection from some OEMs would be, that it would impact their profitable ICE volumes too heavily and lead to them over achieving their BEV compliance penetration goals by too much forcing them to withhold BEV volumes until 2021." More in the latest edition of the West European Electric Car Sales February Report available here.