Germany Considering €5,000 Electric Car Subsidy, With Automakers Contributing 40%

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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.