Cheap, Small Electric Cars May Soon Be Most Expensive: Experts

Exhaust after treatment for conventional engines is becoming more and more expensive while electric engines are driving up prices. In other words, small cars like the Polo look set to become unjustifiably expensive. But not everyone has written off the small runabout, Thomas Gelger reported for Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa).

A new car for less than 10,000 euros, preferably a small one that fits into any parking space at less than four meters long.

This kind of compact model helps many young people save on their first car and fits better into congestion-plagued inner cities. But experts fear that it could soon be history.

Because in order to prepare internal combustion engines for future emission standards and to follow the trend towards electrification, manufacturers will have to put so much money into cars that small cars will become significantly more expensive.

As a result, they could largely disappear from the market.

So why are the small models becoming more expensive? Frank Welsch, head of quality at the VW Group, is looking ahead to the next stage of European emissions standards, which are currently being discussed and defined for the middle of the decade.

"Implementing the discussed EU7 scenarios would only be possible with far-reaching technical measures, which are complex and therefore very cost-intensive." Mild hybrids, which are already standard at least from the mid-size class upwards and are slowly diffusing into the compact class, would hardly be enough.

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