Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes-Benz were already struggling with long-term problems, ranging from rising energy and labour costs in their central European heartlands to malfunctioning software and a tricky pivot away from the internal combustion engine. Initially they were able to ride out the effects of the pandemic thanks to a backlog of orders, but a recovery seems to be running out of steam.
The three collectively made half a million fewer cars at their European factories between January and May than they had done over the same months in 2019, according to figures released by MarkLines, an analytics service, to the Handelsblatt newspaper. This equated to a fall of nearly 20 per cent.
Volkswagen, in particular, appears to be suffering. Of 93,000 vehicles in the battery-electric ID range made in Europe over the first five months of the year, only 73,000 were sold, according to the data.
Thomas Peckruhn, vice-president of the Central Association of German Vehicle Dealers, said a relatively healthy number of new registrations was belied by a darker picture emerging from order books. “New orders for electric cars are down by 30 per cent to 50 per cent on where they were a year ago,” Peckruhn told Handelsblatt
