Tesla has been doing its rounds in electric cars undisturbed for years.
But now the German manufacturers are striking back with power.
It could quickly get uncomfortable for Tesla boss Elon Musk.
Tesla
has bravely pushed the market for e-cars for years.
The established
automakers
have long let the Californians do their thing.
That took bitter revenge.
But now
BMW
,
VW
and
Daimler are
striking
back with full force.
Munich - In the race for dominance in the market for cars with alternative drive systems, the roles were clearly divided for a long time.
On the one hand the grandpa faction with established manufacturers such as
BMW
*,
VW
* or
Daimler
, who have not heard the starting shot for a long time - and on the other hand the cool
Tesla
* hipsters around their omnipresent, but sometimes a little over-the-top multi-entrepreneur -Boss
Elon Musk
.
Musk did a great job with his team.
On the market for e-cars, the Americans had meanwhile been years away from the sleepy competition.
The lead was temporarily so great that some observers already considered the group to be practically impossible to catch.
E-cars: VW, BMW, Audi and Daimler are chasing Tesla
But now the top dogs are fighting back with force.
The counter-offensive is led by
Volkswagen
.
Last year, the Wolfsburg-based company sold a total of 231,600 e-cars, not least thanks to extensive government funding programs in Germany, for example.
This is barely half of
Tesla
's previous year's
sales
, but the growth is enormous.
The Lower Saxony increased their sales figures by 214 percent in the past year.
The Wolfsburg-based company sold 56,500 units
from the new and controversial
ID.3
in the golf class alone.
There were also a further 41,300 E-Golf units and 22,200 E-Ups.
Sales
at the premium subsidiary
Audi also increased
noticeably in the past year.
The e-sales charts in Ingolstadt were led by the beefy
e-Tron
with 47,300 units.
And even the traditional, particularly high-margin sports car subsidiary
Porsche
found a
Taycan
for its e-
bolide
20,000 very well-heeled customers.
In addition,
VW sold a
further 190,500 hybrid vehicles across the group, a jump of 190 percent compared to the previous year.
No wonder that the world's largest automaker is growing in confidence.
"We are well on the way to achieving our goal of becoming the market leader in battery-electric vehicles," said the head of the
VW
core brand,
Ralf Brandstätter
, on Tuesday.
"2020", summarized Brandstätter with satisfaction, would be "a turning point for
Volkswagen
and a breakthrough in electric mobility," said Brandstätter.
At
Daimler
and
BMW
,
too
, the race to catch up is in full swing.
Bayern, for example, lagged behind the VW successes with an increase in e-sales of 13 percent to 44,530 Stromer and almost 40 percent to 148,000 plug-ins.
But in the current year
BMW
is
sending
several hot models to the start, including the two electric SUVs
iX3
and
iX
as well as the i4.
E-cars: Daimler boss Källenius relies on Electric First
Arch-
rival
Mercedes-Benz also
wants to make up ground in the e-car market after a previous year’s increase of 229 percent for electric vehicles and hybrids.
“We are driving our 'Electric First' strategy and the further expansion of our electric model offensive,” announced Daimler boss
Ola Källenius
last Friday when he presented the sales figures for 2020.
In addition to the EQA or EQB, the group also wants to bring the EQS S-Class Stromer onto the market in the course of the year.
And with new models such as the recently launched
ID.4
or the planned
ID.5, Volkswagen
is still under pressure on
Tesla
.
The goal for Wolfsburg is glasglar: By 2023, the influential works council chairman
Bernd Osterloh announced in
an interview in September that
Tesla
will be
overtaken, “probably sooner”.
*
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is part of the nationwide Ippen digital network.