Dacia starts selling the Spring electric car. With a 10,000 euro discount on existing vehicles, the manufacturer makes it possible to switch to an electric car more cheaply than ever before. Regardless of the fact that the Spring is only suitable for short and medium-long distances, is not even in the middle of the pack in terms of quality and was only able to get one out of five stars in the NCAP crash test, that is quite a price breaker. One could now assume that Dacia is alone with the generous reduction, as the car’s successor is in the starting blocks – but then one would overlook the fact that the entire market is moving.
Because Dacia is by no means alone. The Volkswagen Group also recently introduced the “environmental bonus”. Behind this is a comprehensive price reduction with deductions of up to 8,000 euros. Both the ID.3 and the ID.4 cost less than 33,000 euros after deducting the new discounts. That is less than it would have been in 2023 with state funding.
The list goes on: Citroën reduced prices by up to 6,000 euros last fall, the Born from the VW subsidiary Cupra is 10,000 euros below the list price, Smart grants 3,000 euros, Mercedes-Benz pays out the environmental bonus in full own pocket, Kia promises up to 6750 euros and Tesla still lists an environmental bonus of 2250 euros when purchasing a vehicle. The situation is similar for most other manufacturers.
Most manufacturers are countering the possible consequence that interest in electric cars would decline after the end of state subsidies with discounts. People don’t want to know how many millions in taxes could have been saved if pricing had been left to the corporations from the start.
Immediately after the bonus was abolished, things happened remarkably quickly until the brands came forward to generously cover the additional costs, while at the same time sharp criticism of politics was expressed. Now, on top of that, individual discount campaigns follow, which are still based on the lost premium, but often even go one step further.
Buyers should just be aware that the manufacturers’ actions are not as predictable as the promotion was. Even if its abrupt end was certainly a shocker, fixed subsidies could be counted on for a long time and across all brands. Now they are classic, time-limited and very different offers.
However, the individual discount has another advantage: In principle, there is no longer an upper limit for the gross list price of the vehicles. If a manufacturer wants to discount a vehicle, its original price no longer plays a role. The electric car bonus, on the other hand, had hard limits when it came to possible funding.
After the bonus was abolished, experts feared that the market for electric cars would collapse like an avalanche if the federal government stopped receiving money. The fear can probably be dampened somewhat because the manufacturers are obviously very aware of their inventory and are now calculating differently. The customer doesn’t care whether this reduces the company’s profits.
As buyers across the industry are now getting used to the new prices and deep discounts, it is unlikely that there will be a switch back to the original list price after the current promotions end, which for many is at the end of March. So electric car buyers can probably look forward to an old-school price war in which, as the saying goes, the market rules.
