Germany Considering €5,000 Electric Car Subsidy, With Automakers Contributing 40%
Originally published on EV Obsession.
In order to achieve its goal of at least 1 million electric cars on the country’s roads by 2020, the government of Germany is apparently likely to approve new incentives, according to recent reports. Interestingly, the new incentives would see the auto manufacturers in the country provide roughly 40% of the costs of the incentives — which would range up to €5,000 per vehicle.
Through the incentive plan — which was put together by the Environment, Transport, and Economy Ministries — personal electric vehicle (EV) buyers would have access to €5,000 in incentives, and commercial buyers would have access to €3,000 in incentives per EV purchased.
Incentives would first be available starting on July 1st, and would reportedly be reduced by €500 per year. The program is expected to run until the end of 2020 (pending any potential extensions). The plan calls for a reported €1.3 billion in funding — which, as mentioned above, would be partly supplied by German automakers. Which is no doubt intended to push the automakers towards offering more EVs — thereby recouping some of the money that they put into the program.
Here’s more via Der Spiegel (through an imperfect translation program):
Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel (SPD), Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) and Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks (SPD) calculate in the joint paper with a financial need for the premium of a total of 1.3 billion euros. Because 40% of which are to bear the automaker, Finance takes Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) to provide 800 million euros to 2020. That total still significantly higher costs will be incurred, is located on seven other measures under the support.
If nothing else, this program seems as though it would spur the local auto manufacturers to begin offering better EVs, and more EV models in general — so as to not get screwed out of the money put into the program. I suppose that BMW has quite a headstart in that regard.
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If I know the tune, they will build 400HP ICE engines with 20km pure EV range (or whatever the nedc cycle length demands) and get the bonus as a Tesla. We need to find a name for such PHEVs… CHEV? C for “Cheating”…
China’s way a dealing with the Tesla threat is to slap a 25% tariff on each Tesla vehicle and to exclude them from any EV incentives.
Sorry, I don’t see how this relates with my comment.
CHEV
China homegrown EV?
Comments having enormous variations?
May seem like cheating to them, but pulling 20km from every car, every commute, every day, etc, would be a huge reduction in EU gas miles driven.
If you are not driven morally but only by money (as the incentives imply), you won’t go all the hassle of installing a wall box (2000€), getting the cable for public charging (300€), getting the proper cards (2,5€ per quick charge, 0,40€/kWh for conventional charging) , parking away because there is no destination charging… etc when the advantage is limited to some km and nothing apparently happens when you run out of juice. Many of these PHEVs, if sold forcefully, will never get a charge in their life. Check what happens in UK.
I do own a PHEV, it’s a great idea, but one has to charge on every spot, otherwise it makes little sense.
The US has this problem with fleet PHEVs. Doubly so when drivers are given incentives with gas cards, but nothing to offset electricity use and offered no help with home chargers. Though if charged daily a 20km PHEV easily results in 6500km of gas driving offset – over half of the average driven per year in the EU for 2013 of 11,500km.
This is great news. The incentives disappear a little quickly, but if one is optimistic about how rapidly electric car prices will fall, then it’s not such a problem. And at some point the lack of new oil wells being dug or even drilled in places where there is still untapped “real” oil left, will start to bite and the price of oil will go up. It could start today for all I know.
With Germany’s forethought lately, I often wonder what giving them the reins 80 years ago would look like by now.
Honestly I’m curious, would it be a restrictive technocracy or would we be flying around powered by the Sun?
Yeah, 60 million died over 6 years, but we lose 7.8 million a year to starvation presently.
It would look way worse.
Totalitarian systems don’t have the necessary diversity and freedom that are needed to get a society over humps like these.
Just look at what simple monopolies (money + energy) are able to do to society and the planet..
We’d possibly be a Type One Civilization by now. The scientific pace of the Era is unmatched still.
Freedom is what enables the greedy, gluttony, and filthy actions we see rampant today.
It’s conjecture for either of us, but it’s my opinion diversity can still be cultivated and even potentiated under such a hierarchy.
A genius recluse is usually the one thinking up the advance, it’s foundation and then a team solves it.
Nikola Tesla in the mountains, Da Vinci in his dwelling, Archimedes in his show.
The few make the Fewture, and the many need organizational constructs to apply said advance en mass.
working really hard on seeing the results of Fermi’s Paradox?
I’m not quite sure where I see the link between intelligent life aboard and what I’m discussing in the way of consolidated advance by the few.
I guess I’ll take the chance to say I don’t have the ego to think us alone in this aspect of growth with the vastness of the celestial universe, but I’m not sure that statement will do much besides lead to a new discussion of yet another probability.
Probably like the US and China. A little more fascist and totalitarian but wasting enormous amounts of money, that would be better invested somewhere else, on military.
What need would there be for military if the axis won? That’d be the last war.
They were heartless as hell, but kept their conquered in line.
“Seems the whole future of man is left to chance.” No kidding! I think that is known as free will.
I don’t believe in such a thing.
Life is but a predisposed chemical chain by my vantage and we are but automotons. A giant ‘if then’ statement set in motion at the dawn of time, dominos of logical determinism.
We are but electro-chemical computers, a drop of dye in a glass of water. If dropped in precisely the same way into a precisely exact larger body there is just one outcome.
Before you decide to think it illogical think about the fact that the smartest human ever to live thought of the universe in this same way.
I’m not convinced humans are all that smart.
Most aren’t.
I dunno, but I would not be here to enjoy the results.
Good thing about the incentive phasing out is that it will encourage people to buy now rather than wait.
See my above comment, the article is wrong.
I am under-informed, but I do not know how the accompanying infrastructure build-out will work in Germany. I read that in the US people use mostly chargers in their own garage and at employers during work; both will be an option here for fewer people. I hope that someone will go next-doors to the Netherlands to see what is working for the considerable number of EV owners there, and how useful these ‘yellow arches’ stations are, whose name I have forgotten!
Yes, the on-street EV charging system seems to work well in Amsterdam. Citizens request a station when they need one on their street, and the government installs one: http://evobsession.com/ev-charging-in-amsterdam-holland-original-video/
Fastned is the yellow arches of EV charging 😀
http://cleantechnica.com/tag/fastned/
http://fastned.nl/en/
Could BMW sell enough i3 to go Mass Market, and lower prices???
What do you consider mass market? There are already 36,500 i3s sold.
That’s great. But what ever it takes so that BMW could lower the price. 50,000, 100,000???
They are most likely not going to lower the price. The head of the i division explicitly said that the i3 was a premium car and therefore priced that way.
If they find a way to make it cheaper, they’ll just put better batteries in (this year a new version with 50% more range is supposed to be released).
I consider the i3 the new Beetle. Now, though, it’s just the ultra-expensive Beetle.
BMW is still a premium car manufacturer. I don’t think you’ll see something like the beetle (‘a peoples car’) from BMW.
Sorry guys, the article is wrong. Nothing is implemented yet. It’s just a concept and can still change or not happen at all.
So we need to keep waiting.
A German-speaking person sent us the story and said that Spiegel was reported it was approved. Can you check that link and confirm that it is not yet approved?
Yeah, even a lot of german news-sites didn’t report it correctly or in a way that you may think it is already decided.
At first it was said that the 3 ministries (economy, traffic and environment) all want it, but then the traffic ministry said there is no agreement yet.
The paper of the 3 ministries is supposed to be the base for new talks in mid April with the car-industry in the ‘Kanzleramt’ (not exactly sure which people they mean but I guess Merkel and a few others).
It’s all bit confusing (welcome to german politics), but bottom line: nothing is fixed yet.
sources:
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/neue-mobilitaet/5000-euro-praemie-fuer-elektroautos-zum-greifen-nah-14093033.html
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/news/wirtschaft/auto-spiegel-e-auto-praemie-soll-kommen-dpa.urn-newsml-dpa-com-20090101-160226-99-01146
OK, thank you much! I will adjust the phrasing accordingly.
LOL reduced by 500 Euro’s a year ? why bother ?
It’s not like the ICE industry in Germany hasn’t be subsidised for decades !