Europe’s biggest EV market is about to hit a perfect storm of problems
Germany is Europe’s biggest auto market, and it’s been one of the main drivers of EV growth. But now that is expected to change course, as EV sales are projected to drop – by 14% – for the first time in eight years.
Germany’s VDA, an interest group for the country’s automobile industry, says that battery-powered vehicles are likely to see a decline from 524,000 units last year – more than any other European market – to 451,000 units this year. Considering Germany is aiming to have 15 million BEVs on the road by 2030, that number is moving in the wrong direction.
It’s due to a number of factors – primarily because Germany pulled the plug on this EV subsidy program in December, a full year earlier than expected. Add nflation, rising car prices, and “sub-par charging infrastructure,” writes Automotive News Europe, into the mix, and it’s inevitable that sales will drop.
According to Automotive News Europe, manufacturers are pushing back rollouts of EVs, and rental firms are “paring purchases for their fleets.”
Still, even after the subsidy loss, automakers like Tesla, VW, Audi, Stellantis, and Mercedes-Benz have jumped in to compensate for it, at least for a little while.
Renault announced Monday its plan to delay the IPO of its EV startup Ampere, citing slow demand and difficult market conditions as the rationale. Bloomberg reported, too, that Volkswagen is doing the same with its EV business, with sources telling Bloomberg that VW is pushing back its IPO plans for its battery unit.
Still, the decline isn’t all that shocking: Germany’s passenger car market, VDA expects it to shrink by 1% to 2.82 million this year. But that’s part of a downward trend that has been happening since the pandemic, according to VDA.
According to VDA estimates, the global market should see a 2% growth to 77.4 million cars, compared to the 78.8 pre-pandemic. It forecasts the global market to grow by 2% to 77.4 million cars.
Germany is expected to produce 1.45 EVs this year, but much of that output will be exported, the report said. After China, Germany is the world’s second-largest passenger car BEV producer – but considering China produced 6.6 million BEVs in 2023 to Germany’s 1.2 million, that’s a pretty big gap. For comparison, the US produced 1.1 million EVs last year, according to data from VDA and S&P Global Mobility.
Electrek’s Take
The caveat here, too, is that VDA is a lobbyist group for German automakers, powered by stalwarts BMW, Volkswagen, and Mercedes, which are in a tight position as they struggle to adapt to EVs and keep pace with China’s BYD and Tesla. Plus Porsche’s CFO Lutz Meschke said that Europe may push back its 2035 ban on ICE vehicles due to slowing EV demand – so that’s not comforting news of what might be brewing.
Jobs – the good-paying kind with benefits and protections – are on the line too: Volkswagen said it would cut thousands of jobs in Germany to slash $11 billion in costs, and German EV suppliers are cutting jobs, with one of the country’s largest suppliers saying it might slash 20% of its workforce due to low demand.
But peaks and valleys are par for the course in the auto industry, and EVs certainly aren’t immune to this. Still, European automakers are drumming up new models to stay in the game. For its part, BMW says it is now investing $711 million (€650 million) to convert its main factory in Munich to exclusively produce electric vehicles by the end of 2027, in hopes of pushing its next-gen Neue Klasse EVs forward. The automaker says it hit its target of 15% share of battery-electric vehicles – and expects to sell half a million BEVs in 2024.
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Paris’ bike-share system, Vélib has long been considered one of the shining success stories of urban micromobility. With a massive fleet of over 20,000 pedal and electric-assist bicycles around Paris, the service has helped millions of residents and tourists get around the City of Light without needing a car or scooter. But lately, a growing problem is threatening to knock the wheels off this urban mobility marvel: theft and joyriding.
According to city officials and the service operator, more than 600 Vélib bikes are now going missing every single week. That’s over 30 bikes a day simply vanishing from the system – some stolen outright, others taken on “joy rides” and never returned.
“At the moment we’re missing 3,000 bikes,” explained Sylvain Raifaud, head of the Agemob company that currently operates the Velib system. That’s nearly 15% of over 20,000 Vélib bikes across Paris.
The sticky-fingered culprits aren’t necessarily professional thieves or organized crime rings. Instead, they’re often regular users who treat the shared bikes like disposable toys.
The city estimates that many people have figured out how to pry the bikes out of the system’s parking docks, unlocking one for a casual cruise and then ditching it somewhere far from a docking station.
Once pried free, the bikes are technically usable for the next 24 hours until their automatic locking feature kicks in. At that point, the bikes are often simply abandoned. Some end up in alleyways. Others get tossed in rivers. A few just disappear completely.
And since the bikes are intended to be parked at their many docking stations around the city, they don’t have GPS chips, further complicating recovery of “liberated” bikes.
The issue started small but has grown into more than an inconvenience – it’s beginning to undermine the entire purpose of the service. With bikes going missing at such a high rate, many Vélib docking stations are left empty, especially during rush hours.
Riders looking for a quick commute or a convenient hop across town are increasingly finding themselves without available bikes, or having to walk long distances to find a functioning one.
That kind of unreliability chips away at user confidence and threatens to drive potential riders back into cars, cabs, or other less sustainable forms of transport at a time when Paris has already made great strides to dramatically reduce car usage in the city.
The losses are financially painful, too. Replacing stolen or vandalized bikes isn’t cheap, and the resources spent on tracking down missing equipment or reinforcing anti-theft measures are stretching thin. Vélib has faced theft and vandalism issues before, especially during its early years, but this latest surge has officials sounding the alarm with renewed urgency.
Officials acknowledge that there’s no easy fix. Paris, like many cities with bike-share systems, walks a fine line between accessibility and accountability. Part of what makes Vélib so successful is its ease of use and widespread availability. But those same features make it vulnerable to misuse – especially when enforcement is limited and the consequences for abuse are minimal.
The timing of the problem is especially unfortunate. In recent years, Paris has seen impressive results in reducing car traffic, expanding bike lanes, and promoting cycling as a key part of its sustainable transport strategy. Vélib is a cornerstone of that plan. But if the system becomes too unreliable, it risks losing the very people it was designed to serve.
Meanwhile, as Parisians increasingly find themselves staring at empty docks, the challenge for the city and Vélib will be to restore confidence in the system without making it harder to use. That means striking the right balance between freedom and responsibility, between open access and protection against abuse.
In a city where cycling is supposed to be the future of mobility, losing thousands of bikes to joyriders and sticky fingers isn’t just frustrating; it’s unsustainable.
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