More electric cars in the west

More electric cars in the west

According to a study by the consulting and auditing organization EY on the subject of e-mobility, combustion engines still dominate the Austrian mobility market: every second household has a car with a gasoline (52%) or diesel engine (50%), and some even both. Only three percent of households currently own a purely electric car, and around four percent have a vehicle with a hybrid drive. This means that more Austrians have no car at all (11%) than have an electrified car (7%). “The Austrians’ fleet consists of combustion engines,” summarizes Axel Preiss, Head of Advanced Manufacturing & Mobility at EY. Nevertheless, interest in electric cars remains high. When it comes to new car registrations, electric cars now have a market share of 15 percent this year.

According to the domestic energy industry, the mobility transition following the switch to renewable energies is the most important lever for achieving climate neutrality. These are the results of an EY study for which 17 Austrian energy supply companies and 1,000 consumers were surveyed. Most electrified cars – i.e. pure electric cars and hybrid vehicles together – are currently in Vorarlberg. Almost one in five households (18%) in the West has an electrified car. Although Vorarlberg is the federal state with the highest proportion of electric and hybrid vehicles in private households, the federal capital Vienna has the most climate-neutral individual transport. Here the proportion of purely electric cars is only two percent (hybrid vehicles five percent), but in no other federal state do so many people not have a car at all. A quarter of Viennese people do not have a car. “The reason for this is of course obvious: in Vienna, local public transport is well developed due to the population density and is very easily accessible to a wide population group,” says Khinast.

A third of Austrians (32%) can imagine buying a purely electric car in the next five years. The Vorarlbergers dominate here again, where two out of five respondents (41%) are considering purchasing an electric car. Salzburg residents are the least interested in electric cars, with only 27% thinking about buying an electric car. Preiss sees a need for action here: "More must and will happen here - especially in view of the fact that the EU only wants to allow climate-neutral vehicles from 2035 and therefore no new combustion engines will be allowed to be sold from this point onwards. Many car manufacturers have already announced that they will shift their car production entirely to electric cars in the next few years - some even from 2025." Interest tends to be higher in younger target groups than in older ones: in the group of 18 to 29 year olds, 42 percent can imagine buying an electric car in the next five years, while in the group of 60 to 65 year olds, only 21 percent. “This once again underlines that the electric car market is a growth market,” said Preiss.