AUTOMOTIVE MARKET CHARACTERISTICS WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE ELECTRIC VEHICLE MARKET

Ever since the automobile has been invented, the automotive industry has been the generator of numerous technological improvements which, due to obligatory environmental protection legislation and limited energy resources, are more and more focused on to use of electric power. In this sense, electric cars represent an important segment of the observed market, and over time, it is expected that all producers will focus on this type of vehicle. Following the above, the paper investigates the characteristics of the automotive market with special emphasis on the electric car market. The results of the research based on analysis of Pearson correlation coefficient calculated by using data collected from Companies market cap and Statista show that the value of the companies’ stock price in the observed market in the period from 2010 to 2020 is not correlated with each observed year with the number of sold cars. However, by using the Herfindahl-Hirschman index and concentration ratio (CR4) calculated by using data collected from Knoema, it is confirmed that competition forces the most important participants in the internal combustion car market to rapidly restructure and focus on electric cars in order not to lose the existing market share. Finally, regression analysis of data collected from the International Energy Agency proved that the price of a battery per kilowatt-hour is one of the important factors in the development of the electric car industry, while additional descriptive analysis provides detailed insight into different variables determining the level of sales of electric vehicles.