One of the main criticisms of new electric vehicles is the cost of purchase. If you have enough euros for the number of times someone has told you it’s too expensive, you can almost buy it now.
New data suggests that the price gap between cars with internal combustion engines (ICEs) and those with battery electric vehicles (BEVs) may be closing.
At the newly established EV platform, Nevo, data analysts have gathered information on all new ICE, BEV and PHEV (plug-in hybrid EV).
The company claims that the average price of ICE vehicles available today is higher than BEVs and lower than PHEVs.
The phrase “available now” muddies the water, as it includes things like expensive top-end performance cars.
But using them, the average new price for a ‘currently available’ BEV is €66,470.49, compared to €66,713.60 for an ICE, according to the just-released Nevo price index.
The average price of the new PHEV is €70,019.22, the highest of the three.
But with the inclusion of expensive ICE, I don’t think these numbers are very relevant.
Much more realistic numbers are presented elsewhere in the report. We can see that the average price of the top 10 most popular ICEs averages around €39,400, compared to €51,350 for the most popular BEV and €70,000 for the top plugins.
That’s a €12,000 gap, but Nevo says it’s closing. I hope so because affordability is everything on the car front.
It’s fine to talk about annual savings on BEV compared to ICE, but only if you can afford to buy ICE in the first place.
We look forward to the next report before the end of the year. Hopefully the gap will be closed by then.
