Electric Vehicles increasing their share of European market

by eToro analyst for Romania, Bogdan Maioreanu   The automotive market continues its ascending trend, according to the latest EU data, sales soared in July, the twelfth consecutive month of growth. While the most sales were for petrol cars, the next categories were hybrid electric vehicles, which surpassed diesel cars.   From January to July 2023, new EU car registrations grew significantly (+17.6%), totalling 6.3 million units. Despite indications of the European automotive industry’s recovery from pandemic-related supply disruptions, year-to-date volumes are still 22% lower than in 2019, according to ACEA. While petrol cars were 36% of the market and diesel 14%, hybrids were 26%, Battery EV 14% (almost as diesel) and PHEV (plug-in hybrid EV) 8%. Electric cars are seeing a growing trend.   In July, new EU battery-electric car registrations substantially increased by 60.6%, reaching 115,971 units while accounting for 13.6% of the market. Romania sales were impressive too, increasing by 86.4%. Most EU markets for electric vehicles grew significantly by double- and triple-digit percentage gains, including the two largest, Germany (+68.9%) and France (+32.4%). Notably, Belgium recorded the highest sales with an impressive 235.9% growth. Cumulatively, battery-electric car sales recorded a significant 54.7% increase from January to July, with 819,725 units registered.   In the EU, car sales were dominated by the Volkswagen group with 27%, followed by Stellantis (Citroen, Peugeot, Opel, Jeep, etc) with 17% and Renault 10%. Dacia alone amounted to 4.8% of total July sales. Despite the increase in EV sales, Tesla was only 1.6% of total sales as estimated by ACEA, while its Chinese rival NIO was not even mentioned in the statistics.   Tesla and NIO are the first and second most held stock by Romanian investors on eToro social investing platform while at the global level, Tesla is first and NIO is fourth. While Tesla’s share price is up almost 138% this year, NIO’s stock rose only 11% year to date.   In fact, after publishing the Q2 earnings report, NIO’s share price lost 6% due to declining sales margins and profitability. NIO vehicle sales were down 22.1% from the first quarter and 24.9% from a year ago, due primarily to lower average selling prices and decreases in delivery volume. The company delivered only 23,520 vehicles in Q2. Gross profit was down 93.5% year-over-year, with the margin per vehicle margin falling to 6.2% in the quarter, compared with 16.7% a year ago and 5.1% in Q1 of 2023.   With sales mostly in China, NIO’s road to enter into the European market statistics is not simple and requires capital expenditures. The company announced its 7th power swap station in the Netherlands which is only the 26th in Europe. In comparison the company has 1600 similar stations in China. About eToro eToro is the trading and investing platform that empowers you to invest, share and learn. We were founded in 2007 with the vision of a world where everyone can trade and invest in a simple and transparent way. Today we have over 32 million registered users from more than 100 countries. We believe there is power in shared knowledge and that we can become more successful by investing together. So we’ve created a collaborative investment community designed to provide you with the tools you need to grow yourknowledge and wealth. On eToro, you can hold a range of traditional and innovative assets and choose how you invest: trade directly, invest in a portfolio, or copy other investors.