Why Electric Cars Are Struggling to Break through the Market—Today and Probably in the Future

Abstract

Purpose: In the context of global overheating (belittling it as “climate change”), the entire mobility sector, which also includes private individual transport, must make its contribution to decarbonization (goal: 0-CO2 emissions). Politicians, against their better judgment, chose e-mobility as the only conceivable solution and finally decided on it and are now surprised that many drivers cannot, do not want to and perhaps will not opt for this type of technology.

Design/methodology/approach: The aim was to briefly examine why e-cars in Germany are falling short of the sales figures targeted by politics and why the majority of drivers are obviously only motivated to a very limited extent to switch to pure e-cars.

Findings: Over the years, German politics had set very ambitious goals for the switch to the supposed/alleged 0-CO2 technology of e-mobility. The changeover is only comparatively slow; politicians blame the drivers and at the same time are relatively uninterested in the reasons. The drivers feel completely forgotten during the typical use of its cars, expressly also for long holiday trips, which is proven beyond a doubt by a self-conducted calculation based on various examples.

Affected countries: The situation described here, which is largely based on Germany, should be relatively easy to transfer to most EU countries because the situation there is comparable or at least similar.

Research/Future/Practical Implications: E-cars will certainly play a significant role in the future. It is possible that the way cars are used, or by their owners, will (have to) change. Perhaps other types of energy or drive systems such as hydrogen H2 and SynFuels will play a much stronger role, which neither the politicians and journalists responsible today want to see, nor what many car manufacturers and suppliers, nor manufacturers of infrastructures are prepared.

Originality/value: Currently there are practically no scientific books on the use or rejection of e-mobility. Therefore, only current surveys, market quantities and obvious behaviors of users and challenges can be described here.