Spain's EV Plan Short Circuits. Royally

Cammy Corrigan
by Cammy Corrigan

See the picture above? It’s a lady in a white car. Nothing unusual there, right? Well, not quite. For starters, the lady is a queen. A real one.

Before I clarify the picture, let me set the scene. Spain is in the middle of economic turmoil. Its credit rating was cut to AA, it pushed through a €15b austerity plan with just one vote and is having trouble overhauling its labor market (which is considered to be one of the most inflexible in Europe). So, suffice to say, money’s too tight to mention, as someone once said. Unless …

Unless you have a plan for a green mode of transportation. Suddenly, money is in plentiful supply. In the middle of trying to cut costs, the Spanish government pledged to invest €590m (that’s about $775m) into the production of electric cars. It aims to have 250,000 electric and hybrid cars on Spanish roads by 2014. Why, is anybody’s guess.

Wait, there’s more money: In addition to that, they put aside €80m to fund subsidies for electric car sales to customers. It’s for 20 percent of the vehicle, capped at €6,000. So it kind of came as an embarrassment when it was reported that when the Spanish government pledged to have 2,000 electric cars on the road by the end of 2010, figures were released that so far in 2010 only 15 were sold. The previous year? Just one. By my calculations, that works out to be roughly €39,333,333 per car. Good value, eh?

The Spanish government tried to put a brave face on. “The figures are similar to what happened in the beginning with personal computers or mobile phones,” they said via the government backed REVE electric car and wind power project, “The first models are expensive and with few options and initial sales were low.” (Not true. The first personal computers cost a few hundred dollars for a bag full of chips and resistors, and everybody said those who bought them were nuts. Which they were.) So, what’s this got to do with the picture above?

The Telegraph reports that in order to boost sales they roped in a celebrity to help. Quite a big celebrity. The lady in the picture is Queen Sofia of Spain. She was photographed driving a Peugeot iON EV whilst on holiday in Palma, Majorca. How did she describe it? “Phenomenal”. Which is exactly the word I’d use for this boondoggle.

Cammy Corrigan
Cammy Corrigan

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  • Russification Russification on Aug 16, 2010

    there can only be one queen of Spain and 15 EVs.........now everyone go to the beach for another extended holiday

  • Philadlj Philadlj on Aug 16, 2010

    I never thought I'd see a Spanish queen driving a Japanese EV re-badged as a Peugeot. I wonder if Obama could dust her in his Volt.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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