Rarely does a month go by without mentioning the word "record" in reviews of the Ukrainian car market, which refer to the results of sales of electric cars. Every time a plus and a plus, more and more battery-powered cars appear on the roads. From which a natural question arises: why did these records become more frequent only now, why was there not such active trading, say, 10 years ago?
One of the reasons is that there were simply no "electric cars". Before the commercial production of Tesla, this type of transport was considered nothing more than something exotic, experimental, an object for exhibitions, but nothing more. And only after the success of Model S, manufacturers realized that they had literally the last minutes to get on this train from the platform, because then they would have to catch up and jump on the go, which is not very convenient. In practice, the first models from well-known manufacturers began to appear on the market about 10 years ago, and therefore they cost a lot — because they were new, they were several years old ( the average age in the segment was lower than in the UAE car market). And they were actually not at the sites of the American insurance auction in.
The next reason is customs clearance, due to which prices for expensive electric cars were even higher than abroad. Given our purchasing power. Yes, in Ukraine there were not always benefits for the import of electric cars. They appeared (and then were extended several times) thanks to enthusiasts of electric mobility — public activists, individual peopleʼs deputies, ministers and members of the Government. Zero customs clearance was introduced in 2018 and is still in effect (only a small excise tax has returned — 1 euro per 1 kWh of battery capacity, but the fee for the first registration has been canceled). That is why it is worth looking into the archive and looking at the prices of passenger electric cars with mileage, in the "from" format, that is, the minimum market price for which you could buy a particular model in 2018.
Since the Institute of Car Market Research, thanks to its partner Automoto.ua, tracks the prices of all models on about 100 available resources in real time, the slide will show the current prices (as of September 2024) for each model. Also in the "from" format, the currency is the US dollar.
And when there are two numbers, you can easily calculate how much the price has decreased in percentage over the past 6 years. By the way, the average value for all models present here is 65% with a minus sign. Importantly, this price reduction has now practically stopped — you can find out more about this in our monthly price slice.
The list of cars does not include currently popular models such as the Audi e-tron, Jaguar I-Pace, Volkswagen e-Golf, Hyundai Kona, Chevrolet Bolt EV, and the bestsellers of "Tuesday" — the Tesla Model 3 and Y. In 2018, some of these models are already appeared on sale, but in limited quantities, and only abroad, and it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to purchase them freely, without queuing and prior ordering. It is now possible to choose from among European, or more affordable auction American, or new Chinese electric cars, many of which are available, or order them "on demand". Then, in 2018, everything was not so simple.
- You can order a turnkey electric car from Europe or the USA at the West Auto Hub company !
And when you take another look at the slide, it becomes clear that even if it were not for all the difficulties with the availability of these cars as a product, their prices at that time were far from acceptable, at least for the vast majority of Ukrainian buyers, because they were much higher than similar ones class gasoline or diesel cars. So they were mostly bought by well-off enthusiasts who are ready to take risks.
And instead of criticizing these pioneers for being wasteful, they say, how much gasoline could have been bought for this difference in price "before" and "after", it is better to thank them for being the first to agree to pay for the popularization of electric cars as such, so that later they became more and more common, mass, and eventually their prices equaled similar passenger cars with internal combustion engines. Which, in fact, we have now.
- If you need more information about current car market prices or archived data, contact the Car Market Research Institute !
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