German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has found herself in between two other politicians over the future of electric cars in Germany. The German Government previously had a plan of having 1,000,000 electric vehicles on its streets by 2020. However, that plan isn’t looking like it will succeed, with only 30,000 EVs being registered in Germany at the moment. This has much to do with the fact that most Germans find diesel fuel to be the better alternative for lowering emissions and improving economy.
German Vice Chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, wants to help fix this issue and offer up to 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) worth of incentives to EV buyers to help boost sales. However, he’s meeting heavy opposition in Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who’s completely against that idea. Merkel is now caught between the two and wants to find some sort of compromise to help boost EV sales without shelling out that kind of money.
Merkel will be meeting with the heads of the three big German automakers this week to discuss a plan to help boost EV sales and help the economy. Merkel wants to keep Germany’s auto industry competitive the field of electric vehicle, as other countries are embracing the new technology far more. In comparison to Germany’s 30,000 EV’s on the road, Norway registered 26,000 just last year and is one of the world’s leading EV buying countries.
Vice Chancellor Gabriel wants to offer incentives, but in a similar fashion to what other countries are doing. His idea is to offer 5,000 euros worth of incentives to EV buyers until 2020, which might help potential customers get their EV fix in while they can still get the incentive, thus helping Germany hit its 2020 goal. “If we don’t get the market going here, then the vehicles will remain expensive,” Said Gabriel. “We won’t get here in Germany what we want, namely the industrial battery production.”
Bavarian Premier, Horst Seehofer is siding with Gabrial, saying “Sometimes you need to give the business a helping hand,” to which he continued “We want a key technology that will make Germany, which is in a brutal competition with the global automobile industry, fit for the future.” However, Finance Minister Schaeuble feels differently, despite agreeing that the auto industry does need help but in other ways. “In other matters, the auto industry exhorts us to always respect the principles of a market economy,” However, he continued to say that “It’s not the role of the government to help sell cars.”
Germany is playing a large role in the introduction to EV technology, with BMW and its i Division providing affordable lightweight technology, Volkswagen producing inexpensive but practical EVs, like the e-Golf, and Audi creating some top-of-the-line electric SUVs, such as the upcoming e-tron Quattro. So hopefully, Merkel can create a compromise between the two ideals and get Germany to become a major player in the EV world. If she can do so, we’ll see a large boost in electric and hybrid technology coming from Germany.
[Source: Bloomberg]
As a german, I would say, why not? I hate to say it, but maybe petrol and diesel cars should have further increased tax when buying them, to encourage sales of EV or hybrids, like it is in Norway, I believe. Of course that means that the fun, sport cars will be harder to buy, but Germnay should make sure to start implementing more EV policies, also including infrastructure, for the future.
Why not allow UberCommute type rideshare apps on condition that the vehicle must be plug-in hybrid or electric? That would cost taxpayers nothing while giving a big boost to plug-in hybrid and electric vehicle sales. BMW would do well with this since it manufactures one of the larger plug-in hybrids that can accommodate enough passengers to make the monthly payments.
“Of course that means that the fun, sport cars will be harder to buy”
I disagree. Many EVs are *more* fun to drive than petrol/diesel equivalent. Instant torque is addictive! You can actually have your cake and eat it too with EVs.
Sure, but there are no real EV sports cars right now. The massive weight would make it unsuitable as a sports car, sadly. And you can’t enjoy the sound :'(.
We are getting closer on weight, and the sheer amount of torque does help compensate a bit in a straight line as well as CoG.
The sound will indeed be missed.
There are incentives given out that would make electric car incentives look like a drop in a bucket. Here in the US my state didn’t give a one million dollar incentive to a movie production. The story supposedly takes place in a city near by me, but the studio took it to a different state for the $1,000,000 incentive, and simply faked the background. If the multi billion dollar movie industry can receive incentives, I don’t see any harm in encouraging private citizens to think electric.
We always fall for the same trick by thinking ‘this is cheaper or this is the right thing to do’. Soon enough Governments work out a way of hitting you in your pocket because they will always want their slice of the pie.
hmmmm , Merkel seems to be more concerned about electric cars than the “refugee catastrophe” that’s going on in Germany.
All subsidizing leads to hidden bills that will eventually have to be paid by someone. And guess who that will be.
Also, it’s not said that electric cars are necessarily the best solution for the future. They still drag around a lot of weight and their ‘fuel’ economy becomes a lot less attractive when using a lot of highways.