Aurélien Fleurot, edited by Thibalt Nadal
Due to the combination of several factors, such as the coronavirus, the war in Ukraine or the shortage of certain components, the price of cars is expected to increase in the coming weeks. This crisis should concern old cars that run on diesel as well as electric or connected cars.
The war in Ukraine has several economic consequences in France. Among them, the increase in the price of cars. The automotive sector is one of the sectors of the resilience plan presented by the government. The sector has already been very disrupted in recent months, due to du Covid and of shortage of components. In addition to this, there are also supply problems and a sharp increase in raw materials: it is therefore only natural that the price of cars will increase.
Towards a tenth consecutive month of falling sales for the automotive sector
Manufacturers will not tell you exactly how much they are going to increase prices, but the conclusion is unanimous: everything costs them more, whether it is aluminum which makes it possible to lighten cars, palladium to manufacture catalytic converters for thermal vehicles or the copper that often came d’Ukraine, whose price per ton has reached record highs. And then, of course, energy, as explained by Luc Chatel, president of the Automotive Platform.
“For example, we have quantified the impact on the cost of a battery of the rise in electricity prices, it is more than 4,000 euros, so that means that we have absolutely considerable upheavals to come. for the sector”, he analyzes.
And if electric and connected cars cost more and more expensive anyway, it will still be necessary to limit the increases warns Claude Cham, honorary president of the FIEV, which represents automotive suppliers: “we must also think that the energy, we as an industrialist consume a lot of it”, he explains, before specifying that the manufacturers have “the need to maintain a certain market for the purchase of the vehicle, because if we do not have customers, these are factories that are not going to run at full capacity”.
The rise in costs looks set to last and the automotive market appears to be on its way to its tenth consecutive month of falling sales.
