Car giants are being forced to confront some hard truths over the EV transition

European car giants are contending with a perfect storm of challenges on the path to full electrification, including a lack of affordable models, a slower-than-anticipated rollout of charging points and the potential impact of European tariffs on EVs made in China.

Volvo Cars on Wednesday announced it had abandoned its heavily promoted plan to sell only EVs by 2030, citing a need to be "pragmatic and flexible" amid changing market conditions.

The Swedish automaker said it now aims for between 90% and 100% of its car sales to be fully electric or plug-in hybrid models by 2030. The company now says that up to 10% of its sales will represent a limited number of mild hybrid models by that deadline.

Crisis-stricken Volkswagen and several other carmakers, including Ford and Mercedes-Benz Group, have all announced plans to delay earlier targets to phase out sales of internal combustion engines vehicles in Europe.

"I think a lot of manufacturers are obviously going through this process [of delaying electrification targets] at the moment. We're seeing it across the industry," Tim Urquhart, principal automotive analyst at S&P Global Mobility, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" on Monday.

"A lot of manufacturers who had sort of stopped investing in internal combustion engine technology have started to realize that, if we don't continue to invest, we're not going to be competitive, we're not going to actually have the product in showrooms that people want to buy," he added.

Urquhart said governments in key markets had implemented measures to encourage people to buy battery electric vehicles (BEVs) with mandated targets —a trend that he described as "increasingly problematic."

The U.K., for instance, introduced a mandate that requires 22% of