Official statistics through the first three quarters of this year portray a confusing picture, with one main certainty: a declining BEV market. Overall car sales Q1–Q3 2022 were marked by an ongoing contraction from 2021 post-covid rebound levels. About 990,000 car registrations were recorded, down almost 16% year on year from. Traditional petrol and diesel powertrains were hit hardest: down by about a quarter in absolute sales numbers. They stopped at 27.8% and 20.
Full electric cars are the surprise losers of the year. With just over 36,000 registrations by the end of Q3, BEVs declined 23.6% YoY from the highs of 2021, when over 47,000 units were sold in the same period. Market share stopped at 3.6%, down from a round 4% a year ago. A prolonged holding phase in the wait for incentives through the first five months of 2022 cut the legs out of a market in need of fiscal stability.
A slightly different path was taken by plug-in hybrids, which managed to stay afloat despite the worsening car market cycle. With almost 50,000 registrations, PHEVs limited their YoY decline to -6.6% . This in turn meant an increase in market share, as most other powertrains suffered major losses. At 5%, PHEVs in fact increased their share YoY from 4.5% twelve months ago.
More A- and B-segment BEVs followed, with just a touch of upmarket models. The VW ID.3 is in eighth position, far from its true potential, and the unfailing Tesla Model 3, penalised throughout the year by a heavily increased price tag and internal competition by its sibling Model Y, produced more “locally” in Germany.
The first three quarters of 2022 showed numbers far from the kind of statistics one would have hoped and expected for the Italian EV arena, but the many headwinds, local and global, hampered a market that promised to break new barriers. It’s hard to predict any redemption in coming months, unless unlikely major political and economic shifts drive EVs out of this downturn.