+ 15% due to incentives – Corriere.it

In Italy, the incentive effect for the car market has finally arrived – and not surprisingly: In June, 160,046 cars were registered, an increase of 15% compared to the same month in 2023, while the January-June final figure, with 886,386 cars registered, recorded an increase of 5.3% compared to January-June 2023. The good result in June is due exclusively to the registrations of electric cars thanks to the generous incentives launched by the Government and made available to the public starting from June 3. On that day, the entire allocation planned for electric cars was ‘burned’, an exceptional fact because in the past they had proven to be higher than the demand. For the record, after a month, 23% of the allocation for hybrid cars and 45% of the allocation for cars with emissions from 61 to 135 grams of CO2 per km are still available.

Refinance the fund?

“The June event, which saw the share of electric cars on registrations rise to 9%, shows that there is demand for the sector, but it needs to be facilitated by significant incentives. And in this regard it should be noted that it would be appropriate to divert the residual allocations for hybrid and traditional cars with low CO2 emissions, which are not particularly popular today, to refinance the incentives for electric cars” says Gian Primo Quagliano, president of the Centro Studi Promotor. And in any case we should not be satisfied with a positive June, given that there are months of poor results to recover. “It is urgent that the Government indicate as soon as possible which direction it wants to take to favor the transition path, both for the necessary and current refinancing of the fund, and on the strategy to follow in the next two-three years” comments the president of Unrae, Michele Crisci.

Plug-in getting worse and worse

In any case, the news is that electric cars are growing by 118% and their penetration is jumping from 4.4% to 8.3%. At the top of the list we find the Tesla Model 3 (3,282 registrations), followed by the Tesla Model Y (1,699), Dacia Spring (878). On the other hand, the negative moment of plug-in hybrids continues: -25.9% and a share in decline from 5.4% to 3.5%. On the contrary, non-rechargeable hybrids are rising by 27.2% (+30.5% for “full”, +26% for “mild”) and are going from 34.8% to 38.7% of the market. Among traditional engines, petrol cars are growing by 6.7%, for a share that is worsening from 28.4% to 26.5%, while diesel cars are losing 20.4% and falling from 18.5% to 12.8%. Methane also did badly (-33.6% and a weight now close to zero), while LPG did well (+37.1% and penetration increased from 8.4% to 10.1%).

Panda always queen

Nothing changes at the top of the ranking of the most popular models: the Fiat Panda, with 10,610 units, is still first. The second position is occupied by the Dacia Sandero (7,650) and the third by the Citroën C3 (4,676). They are followed, in order, by the Renault Clio (4,453), the Fiat 500 (4,254), the Lancia Ypsilon (4,149), the Renault Captur (3,546), the Toyota Yaris Cross (3,322) and the Tesla Model 3. There is anticipation, among industry insiders, for the next two months which are the vacation months: in short, the incentive effect could already be exhausted. An effect that does not fail to arouse criticism, see Salvatore Saladino, Country Manager of Dataforce Italia: «The hoped-for acceleration of electric car registrations, that is, finally being able to take the many suspended contracts out of the drawer to be able to hook them up to the state incentive, has happened. But this data simply means the realignment of sales volumes to those of the first half of 2023 and a share that still does not reach 4%. At the end of the year we expect a closure at 70 thousand registrations and a share of 4.4%, only 0.2 points higher than that of 2023. In short, incentives well spent …».