Vehicle registration statistics in Spain lose their shine as they approach the electric car. The market as a whole grew by almost 17% throughout 2023 and once again approached one million units, but sales of electric passenger cars leave much to be desired, especially when compared with the rest of Europe and with the Government objectives: they barely reach 6% and, adding plug-in hybrids, the percentage does not reach 12%.
“The electric vehicle market has not just taken off in our country,” is the conclusion of a recent PwC report on the subject in which the main and well-known reluctances of drivers are cited: charging time, limited autonomy , the uncertainty about the life of the batteries and, above all, their purchase price, still much higher than a combustion vehicle.
Consumers are not getting it, or at least a large part of them, whose salaries are far from embracing the new electrification. The report also shows that, if something differentiates the owner of an electric car from the rest, it is his purchasing power. On average they earn 52,000 euros per year, practically double the average salary in Spain, of 25,900 euros, to which are added other features such as having a parking space and a second vehicle with which to make longer journeys.
“This high profile has already been reached by the market, but it would be necessary to reach the average citizen,” they explain from the Faconauto vehicle sellers association. In Excel sheets and in consumer psychology there is a crossing point at which, once the cost of energy is taken into account, the price of an electric car and a conventional car will be similar. “We are not close to that point” and the differences are still between 20% and 30%, the sellers add.
What already seems clear is that it will be difficult to achieve the objective set by the Government of 5.4 million electric cars in circulation in 2030, set in the National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan (PNIEC). At the end of 2023, there were 450,000 electric vehicles circulating on Spanish roads, so to meet the expectations, an average of 715,000 would have to be incorporated per year in a market of nearly one million units. Sector sources directly describe the objective as “unrealizable.”
Where all is not lost is in the gap with the EU, despite the fact that Spain is among the countries that are lagging the furthest. Its 11.7% of electric and plug-in hybrid registrations is ahead of Italy’s 8.5%, but is much lower than that of richer countries such as Germany, where it is 24%, or France, where it reaches 25%, according to data from the European manufacturers association Acea. Of course, no one comes even close to Norway and its 90%.
However, there is no clear correlation between the country’s wealth and the popularization of the electric car, and we do not have to look far to prove it. Portugal, with a weight of 31.5% of electric and plug-in hybrids in its total sales, is much more advanced than Spain thanks, according to the PwC report, to “the direct application of aid at the time of “purchase” of the car and its taxation.
“The new Government should look at countries like Portugal, where a change in tax regulations produced a clear acceleration of the electric vehicle market,” said Stef Cornelis, director of the environmental organization Transport, recently at a conference in Madrid.
The Anfac manufacturers association agrees in highlighting the importance of the Government taking the initiative, through fiscal means and also through direct aid. One of their requests is that purchase aid be received at the time of purchasing the electric car and not after a year, as is the case now. He also warns that citizens do not know about the Moves aid plan and defends a change in automobile taxation that concentrates incentives on electric cars.
“We ask that the market be accelerated as soon as possible to reach electric figures of between 22% and 25% of the total,” the association states. For manufacturers, there is a key connection between car production and the market, so for electric vehicles to be assembled in Spanish plants it is also necessary for them to have potential buyers around.
Are these measures enough for the electric car to spread to the broadest sections of the population? From the association of sellers and workshops Ganvam they add a measure to the formula: to provide aid for the purchase of second-hand electric cars, up to 36 months old. “It is a way to ensure that the price differential, which is a great obstacle, is narrowed. Now an electric car costs on average 40,000 euros, but its value in three years will be half that, 20,000 euros. If purchasing is encouraged at that time, we will be able to reach the middle class,” say vehicle dealers.
While waiting for demand to surge, the plan to encourage the supply of the Spanish industry is much clearer and is called Perte VEC, with which the Government is channeling European funds to develop battery factories and produce electric models in the country. The Perte of the automotive industry is the priority of the Ministry of Industry – its head, Jordi Hereu, joked at a public event saying that at night he dreams of Pertes – and the objective is to launch a third call at the beginning of this year with more than 1,200 millions of euros.
The picture is completed by the infrastructure of charging points, which are also below the objectives and which are key in a country like Spain, where the population tends to live in apartments and does not always have a private parking space. Anfac demands greater coordination from the Ministry of Transport in the deployment of charging points and a simplification of the procedures to deploy these infrastructures.
In this type of infrastructure, the relative Spanish delay is compounded by the low percentage of fast charging points, the cost of which is high for operators. The associations themselves denounce that many of them do not work or that they take years to register due to cumbersome bureaucracy. They also miss a unified platform where drivers can have reliable information about which operating points are available to them.
For the year just concluded, the objective was to have a network of 45,000 charging points, above the just over 30,000 installed to date, according to calculations by the European Commission.
The latest data presented by Anfac showed that in Spain there are 383 public charging points per million inhabitants, compared to 1,228 in France, 1,053 in Germany or 745 in Portugal. For experts, the ideal would be for there to be one public charging point for every ten electric cars.
