00:00Peter Wells is director of the Centre for Automotive Industry Research at Cardiff University.
00:07Electric vehicle sales are picking up in the UK and across much of at least Northern Europe.
00:12I would emphasize that there is this quite significant divide.
00:16The North of Europe definitely really embracing electric vehicles.
00:21Southern Europe and some of the Eastern European countries are much, much slower to adopt those vehicles
00:27and it's leading to something of a north-south divide.
00:31Interesting but I'm also thinking about net zero goals and things like that.
00:34Are Europeans buying electric because they want to or because they have to?
00:40I think it's mostly because consumers in Northern Europe at the moment particularly are aware of those fuel prices
00:46but of course what's really going on here is that those cars are becoming a lot more attractive
00:51even compared with typical petrol or diesel alternatives.
00:55So yes, we've seen diesel prices going up.
00:58Yes, we've seen more and more concern about the future of petrol and diesel
01:02but at the same time, electric vehicles have got much more choice, much more, shall we say, competitive propositions.
01:11More variety, more performance, more interest factor and much more consumer confidence
01:16that this is a technology that's going to be staying and staying for a long time.
01:21So you're saying it is about being packed with technology and the latest innovation
01:26but you nodded yourself to those sky-high diesel prices.
01:30If fuel prices fall back, do these sales fall with them?
01:37I think this is one of those really intriguing questions.
01:40What happens if by some remarkable chance those petrol and diesel prices really do fall back substantially?
01:47I'm not expecting that to happen quickly but if it does happen, I think there's enough momentum in the electric
01:53vehicle market
01:54for consumers still to want to convert into this whole new way of going about their mobility.
01:59They will have invested increasingly in charge points at home, for example.
02:04There are many more networks available in the market outside, so when they're driving around.
02:08They will have experienced, more and more of them will have experienced what it's like to drive an electric vehicle
02:14and probably will come away impressed.
02:16So I'm not expecting a sudden collapse of electric vehicle sales and bear in mind those net zero ambitions remain
02:24albeit a bit diluted within the European Union.
02:28We have to talk about though who is building these cars and the impact it's having on those legacy automakers.
02:35Chinese brands are now one in five of the models on sale.
02:40Can Europe's car makers ever match them on price?
02:45Well, I think in a way this is not a discussion about price.
02:48This is a discussion that's really politics as much as anything else.
02:52It's about who gets into the market and who doesn't.
02:54And certainly at the moment Europe as a whole is pursuing this made in Europe strategy.
03:01They want to create barriers to entry premised on the amount of local value added within Europe.
03:07But there are major sticking points with that.
03:09The UK, for example, is now being pressured to join the European Union's position in terms of tariffs on electric
03:16cars coming from China.
03:18Well, we may do that. We may not. We have to see.
03:21But neither will that resolve the issue of battery technology and batteries built up into a state where they can
03:29be put into vehicles.
03:29Because at the moment Europe cannot meet its own local requirements in terms of battery manufacturing.
03:36our operation is being done.
03:36It will take away some time, in terms of a large machine.
