What annoys me about this plan is that every hybrid car is eligible. There are some hybrids that can barely drive 10miles on electric and thus never get charged by the owners (because installing a charging spot can be really expensive) and yet the cars count toward a total maximum.
Hybrid cars should either have their own maximum limit (after that limit the subsidy ends) or every manufacture should have their own limit (like it is in the US, the first 200k electric cars get the $7,500 off for every manucature). This would make sure that 90% of those cars are not hybrids that can barely drive 10miles on electric and people have a chance to get the subsidy when the bolt and tesla model 3 are available (I think the model 3 will not be available without reservation before the end of 2019). Currently, there are no purely electric cars that don't suck (the Nissan Leaf has a range of 100miles and looks kind of funny and is incredible expensive for what it has to offer; the model S/X are excluded from the subsidy because they are considered luxury cars).
A bit of a sidenote but I completely disagree with your dismissal of purely electric cars.
I drive a 2016 Kia Soul EV and the car is just plain awesome. It drives way better than any ICE car I've driven and is just a complete joy to drive daily. The only point I agree with is that the range is still a bit lacking at the moment (I get about 100 miles of highway traffic out of it, 120 miles in city traffic.)
Then again, where I live (The Netherlands) the density of the public charging network is already pretty good, so I can usually charge it with a public charger whenever I park somewhere. And there's a network of fast-chargers along our highways [0].
I've also test-driven a VW E-Golf and BMW i3 and both are solid cars (though imho the Soul is a better car for a better price.)
My hope for subsidies like this (even if they also apply to plug-in hybrids) is that they help make the public charging network in Germany and surrounding countries (like mine) better.
I really hate to see such a negative reply being the top comment, especially when much of it is subjective (what sucks to you is great for me).
Hybrids, plug-in hybrids, parallel and series drive trains are all different as clarified in the other daughter comments. While they use differing percentages of electric power, I still think the key is using electric for 0-10 mph and for regeneration. Once you do that, you can overcome some of the inefficiencies of the ICE.
The article doesn't go into the details of how the subsidies are allocated, so it doesn't make sense to assume one way or the other. I do like your suggested allocation, but for all we know, that could be how they are planning on doing it. Or if you are German, write to your representative to suggest it.
Finally, I have driven the Nissan Leaf and totally disagree with your dismissal of it. It drives way better than equivalent ICE cars of similar size and price range (after US gov't tax credit). For suburban driving, the range is sufficient, it just requires a home charger. Looks are subjective and I agree I find it a bit odd, but there are alternatives. There is a Kia Soul, Ford Focus, and Mercedes B-class that are electric and identically-styled to their ICE equivalents. So I really think your exaggerated claims are based on ignorance.
What it boils down to is that you can't have new products and dismiss them for not not being exactly like the old products. Somebody has to be the beta-tester.
> Hybrids, plug-in hybrids, parallel and series drive trains are all different as clarified in the other daughter comments. While they use differing percentages of electric power, I still think the key is using electric for 0-10 mph and for regeneration. Once you do that, you can overcome some of the inefficiencies of the ICE.
That is true but it doesn't really change the fact that they are still dependent on fussil, which is not the way forward.
> The article doesn't go into the details of how the subsidies are allocated, so it doesn't make sense to assume one way or the other. I do like your suggested allocation, but for all we know, that could be how they are planning on doing it. Or if you are German, write to your representative to suggest it.
You're, right the article doesn't say how the subsidies are allocated but what the article is hardly new. The deal was first confirmed on April 27th 2016 and you could read it in almost every German newspaper. And they confirmed that only the first 400,000 vehicles get the subsidies, no matter if they are hybrid or not.
Secondly, they will also build 15,000 charging stations, and tax breaks for electronic cars (the news paper called them E-cars, but don't go into detail if hybrids are included).
> Finally, I have driven the Nissan Leaf and totally disagree with your dismissal of it. It drives way better than equivalent ICE cars of similar size and price range (after US gov't tax credit). For suburban driving, the range is sufficient, it just requires a home charger. Looks are subjective and I agree I find it a bit odd, but there are alternatives. There is a Kia Soul, Ford Focus, and Mercedes B-class that are electric and identically-styled to their ICE equivalents. So I really think your exaggerated claims are based on ignorance.
I'm glad you like the Nissan Leaf, and when it was first introduced, it was great news because it was really forward thinking at the time (2010 if I remember correctly). Unfortunately, they have not improved much in the past 6 years (comparing how fast the completion improved). And since the range is only sufficient for urban driving, a Nissan Leaf can never be a first car for most families (because, at one point, you want to take a road trip and renting a car for the weekend, I have to pay about $200 just for just 2 1/2 days. In my city, a lot of people drive to the Baltic Sea on weekends and a Nissan Leaf wound not be sufficient for that road trip (it's about 250km/150mi).
Furthermore, the Nissan Leaf is frowned upon in Germany because many people think it looks like a golf car (German car manufacturers have had their fair share of it too).
Because of all those arguments, the Nissan Leaf is not an ideal car for most people and most Germans I know consider 30,000€ cars luxury cars (in 2009, the average price of new cars was 22,000€ and I know many people who only buy used cars because they think 22,000€ is too much for a car). And if you want to buy an expensive car, most Germans want a good looking BMW or Mercedes (they are cheaper in Germany then in the US because they are not imported).
My rant is mostly how this deal has been reached, considering we could have done so much better. If this subsidy was only for electric cars, German manufacturers would finally start producing good-looking electric vehicle with proper range (i don't get why it is so hard to make a compelling electric car anyways). This way, electric cars could have been adopted quicker but instead we chose a slower adoption path (this is typical for Germany). What really needs to happen is that car markers start producing proper electric cars, and this subsidy could have changed a lot, if properly implemented.
I find many of your arguments weak. Many families I know have 2 cars, even in Europe. One electric (current Leaf, Soul, etc.) for commuting, the other ICE sedan for commuting/traveling would be perfect for them. Europeans, incl. Germans drive much uglier cars than the Leaf (Multipla?). A Leaf with quick-charge port (CHAdeMO) would allow 30 min charge if there is a station half-way to the coast (which there might be already).
I do agree that electric vehicle offerings and government policies are not ideal, but your attitude (about electrics and gov't policy) boils down to "if it's only half-good, let's slam it for not being perfect." I don't see how that can help adoption.
The primary point of hybrids is that the ICE charges the battery. So a charging station isn't even necessary and most hybrids don't have a port for this reason. When energy gets low the ICE fires up to recharge the battery. Most hybrids are decent city drivers. The engine is off for rush hour where stop and go is common. Once on the highway the ICE takes over where its most efficient between 30-90km/h.
This is not the way most hybrids work. Ford, honda and toyota vehicles have power-split or series parallel where the power delivery is some percent electric/gas. In other words most hybrid cars can drive 0 miles on electric only and require some combination of gas and electric power.
The series hybrid that you describe is available in the chevy volt and an option on the bmw i3 series. The electric only range of these is 53 (volt) and 81 (i3) miles. These are very much "mostly electric" cars.
Most hybrids, in split/parallel mode, are essentially ICE cars, but with significantly improved gas mileage. This significant improvement in gas mileage (going from ~30 mpg to ~50 mpg) is a good reason to include them, but it does mean a half-assed parallel battery power system could be used to game the system.
There should probably be some minimum torque delivery or percent power required.
I've only ridden in Priuses. They are popular with Parisian taxi drivers. Creeping along at 15-30kph in rush hour traffic the engines rarely came on. It might be different for other hybrids but the Priuses of that vintage (I know the tech gets better each year) can definitely move, for short distances, on battery alone.
Definitely agree that hybrids should have some sort of baseline of electric locomotion.
The idea behind subsidizing electric cars is to compensate for their higher prices and subsequently increase consumer demand. Including hybrids would undermine that, especially given the relatively low number of options available (less so at under the 60.000€ cap) today.
But the German government's goal is to replace inefficient ICE automobiles with more efficient alternatives and not just sell more electric cars. Hybrids, though less desirable than fully electric cars, are still a significant improvement. They're plentiful, available in a number of different models across multiple price points, and available today rather than a few years down the line.
From that perspective, including hybrids makes perfect sense.
Eh... not really. Doing that is actually not very efficient because of all the losses you incur going from AC to DC, into the battery, then out of the battery, back to AC and into the motor. The Honda Accord Hybrid, Mitsubishi Outlander and BMW I3 do something like what you describe, but they take the energy straight out of the generator, which still has some losses, but is made up for by the lack of a multi-speed transmission. None of those cars will charge the battery past a bare minimum at stop lights.
One thing the article is missing: the subsidy is explicitly limited to vehicles that cost less that 60.000€. One can say with pretty high confidence that this is done with the explicit goal of excluding Tesla's Model S and Model X.
This would be somewhat understandable, given that the subsidy's purpose is to give an upper hand to our own automotive industry in the electric market... if they had anything to offer. The updated BMW i3 is arguably the only German electric vehicle worth mentioning. E-Golf utterly fails on range (pending a future update), and both Daimler offerings (electric Smart and the B-Class Electric Drive) are way overpriced for what they offer.
I'm pretty sure you don't have to be super rich to own a model S or model X. I usually consider super rich to be owning a private jet kind of money. You can lease a model s for example for the monthly cost of a decent cloud server like an m4.10xlarge - sure it's expensive server, but we are not talking super rich expensive right?
Don't get focused on the "super" part. I think he's right, you must at least be "rich" to buy one of the current Tesla offerings. Rich in the sense that probabably less than 1/100 (most likely even much lower - maybe 1/1000) of the total population can afford a car in that price range. Especially if it's for private use and not a company car. I personally know 0 people that own a private 100k€ car.
It is a political isue. In Germany the average income is at about 30.000,- Euro.
So many people cannot aford any EV, even the cheapest. So they are excluded from any subsidies.
But they pay their taxes. They work for the rich people, the company owners. They work for their profits, so that the rich are able to pay taxes or transfer the money to panama and avoid paying taxes.
The party SPD is a working class party for those people earning about 30.000,- and less.
And now consider to explain those people, that they pay taxes to subsidies the drives for the rich people.
Driving Porsche 918 with Weisach-Update for example.
There is no way to do this without an upper limit.
"One thing the article is missing: the subsidy is explicitly limited to vehicles that cost less that 60.000€. One can say with pretty high confidence that this is done with the explicit goal of excluding Tesla's Model S and Model X."
Here in Flanders (Belgium) we also subsidy electric cars and while it doesn't exclude Tesla's, you will get a lot less than when you buy an electric car from another brand. And that mainly because they are cheaper.
I can say that with pretty high confidence it isn't about giving the upper hand to our none existing automobile industry, but prevent burning through the subsidy at a high rate.
Consumers who can afford >60.000€ cars are in most cases not the target group of these kind of subsidy programs.
> Consumers who can afford >60.000€ cars are in most cases not the target group of these kind of subsidy programs.
That's fine really. But the question in concern is that HOW the 60,000€ price point was achieved. It could well be 30,000€ or 40,000€ but the number seems arbitrary. One of the reasonable explanations, prima facie, that it is to exclude Tesla specifically.
See it from another angle: why are you so worked up over the specific limit of 60k? Because you would certainly say just the same thing, had the limit been 65k, 55k or even 30k.
You're practically demanding that the government chooses a limit to specifically include Tesla.
On the continuum of prices for electric vehicles Tesla is one of the (but not the sole) outlier. By choice. Of course chances are high that they will be excluded as long as there is any limit, no matter how that specific limit has been chosen.
Your argument would hold true for 65,000€ or 50,000€ limit too. Why not those limits then? How was the magic number of 65,000€ arrived?
I think you've missed the point again. I'm asking a question on how the 60,000€ number was arrived. If it is not arbitrary, it's fair game. If it isn't, it's a deliberate protectionist move.
Since you can ask that question for every number, it is useless.
Unless you have indications that suggest "a deliberate protectionist move" it's pure polemic.
I have no idea how that specific number was reached. But since I don't suggest ulterior motives or a grand conspiracy I don't have to provide anything. You have to show evidence or at least a coherent argument that amounts to more than "I don't like the outcome".
"Hey Bill, we don't want to subsidize rich people's sports cars, what do you think is a good number for defining a sports car that we don't want to cover?
Uh, I don't know, maybe around 60k gets into the sports car range?"
You are right. 60k is an arbitrary number. Just like 50k and 70k is arbitrary.
But they wanted to have a limit, probably so rich people couldn't use it. So they probably just picked a round number that sounded nice.
I don't know how it was achieved, but I would guess it was to choose a number that helps subsidize the majority of people without sounding unfair to anyone. If you go to 30k then you exclude most of the offerings, as the cost of EVs is currently still high.
Now 60k is a number that includes common middle cars (A4, C-Class, BMW3) or even the next line depending on the configuration. These are cars that are already expensive for the vast amount of the population, but still common enough that you should not reject the offer from those buyers. Especially since this is a price number where you still see an amount of private purchasers.
Everything above is mostly purchased by companies or by some very rich people. It does not make sense for the government to throw tax money at them.
I'm not sure if it's available in Germany, but in the UK Volvo do a varient of the V60 which is a plug in hybrid. Converting GBP to EUR it would be ~€65,000 vs €30,000 for the basic petrol model.
At this much more and with only a 30 mile range it's still only really for buyers in the "I've got cash to burn" category.
It's a kind of a straw man that you raise. I never said that it's not the "I've got cash to burn" category. All I'm asking is how that 60,000€ number was reached to. It could be 50,000€ or 70,000€ but it was specifically 60,000€
>One thing the article is missing: the subsidy is explicitly limited to vehicles that cost less that 60.000€. One can say with pretty high confidence that this is done with the explicit goal of excluding Tesla's Model S and Model X.
In response the ever-cheeky Tesla is matching the subsidy, offering a lease on their base model for €494/mo.
Frankly, yes. If anything, someone who has spare 80k€ to spend on a car is more careful with his/her money, and 4k€ is nothing to sneeze at, no matter what kind of income one has.
No! Just look at how many people bought $80k teslas who previously only had <30k cars because they did not care about cars at all until a nice electric car came along. They want to save the environment and are willing to pay $$$ for it. According to a study I've read (can't find it sorry) 80k is a significant amount of most of those buyers but they are willing to lease a car for $800 a month to help the environment. So they are not millionaires who have more money then they can ever spend. Why should those people be punished?
Furthermore, most people who can afford those cars already pay more then 50% of their income in taxes so they should have every right to be rewarded for buying a "green Car".
With the hybrids being included, I fear the money will run out before the first Model 3's arrive on this side of the Atlantic. I'd love if it didn't, being an early in-store reservation holder myself :)
Should have invested into charging infrastructure, bike lanes or street infrastructure all together.
Last time the government threw all that money at the car industry people ended up selling their good cars and getting cars who faked their emission measurements. So I'm pretty skeptical here...
Exactly. This way it's an obvious subsidy to our most important industry with dubious benefits. That money could be spent a lot better if the goal is to reduce CO2 emissions by traffic.
I wonder though, I've seen comments off and on that Germany's windmills producing more power than demand late at night. You could consider each electric car as grid connected battery.
I get the feeling Germany's leaders have a long standing dislike of oil imports. Which causes them to want to look the other way when it comes to diesels. Flip side replacing 30 million oil fueled cars with 30 million electric cars + 50,000 Windmills is also attractive.
Exactly. I was terribly disappointed at the poor bike infrastructure I saw in Germany two weeks ago when I visited Munchen and Nuremberg. Those cities would be perfect for bikes, but instead they are totally dominated by ICE vehicles. It is very sad.
You are right Munich is terrible. I brought my bike there once when I was working in our Munich office because I've heard the traffic is horrible. I was never so stressed out driving a bike through a city before. Collegue commented on this with: "what did you expect in BMW-City?". Guess you really have to love your BMW really much to add an extra hour just to get to work.
Frankfurt where I live is not as bad, they've done a lot in the last years compared to cities like Munich but it's also not representative from what I experienced and hear from the community.
4.000€ is not really going to make a difference for anyone looking at higher end cars. Even an i3 is 34.000€ and I believe the VW e-golf is in the same price range.
What low end electric cars are available in Germany? Nissan Leaf 21.000€, Renault TWIZY 7.000€, Renalt Zoe 21.500, Mitsubishi MIEV 24.000€.
4.000€ is not really going to make a difference for anyone looking at higher end cars. Even an i3 is 34.000€ and I believe the VW e-golf is in the same price range.
I wonder what the leasing options look like. In the U.S. the i3 has an absurd $40K+ sticker price. But BMW is offering leases that cost $~330/mo: http://www.bmwusa.com/bmw/special-offers/lease/2015-BMW-i3-w..., which is much more attractive and reasonable.
Not sub-25k but the Kia Soul EV looks to be around 29.000€ and is a way better car imho than the i3 and e-golf. The 4k subsidy brings it just under the 25k mark.
Disclaimer: I've test-driven all three and now 'own' a 2016 Kia Soul EV.
How does electric charging work in Germany? The cost of electricity in Germany seems to be 6x what it is in parts of the US, so I'm not sure if the economics work out for electric cars there anyway.
Electricity is $0.08-0.15 per KWH; gas is about $2-3/gallon. (There are obviously exceptions -- Hawaii electricity is almost German prices, and it is progressive, so if you use a lot you pay a high marginal rate. There are also specific areas with really expensive gas, maybe 2x the cheapest gas.)
Electric seems like an easy choice in the UK -- high fuel costs and not high electricity prices -- and a less obviously good choice in places in the US with cheap fuel (Midwest, south) but expensive power (I think some small utilities have high rates due to legacy costs)
It doesn't seem like a clear winner in Germany yet, or at least is relatively less good than in California (high fuel costs, high subsidies for electric cars, high traffic, and relatively low electric costs).
If I lived in Germany (goal!) I'd still consider getting an electric as a city car if everything else worked out, just for environmental reasons, but I'd probably still be tempted to get a 550d or something instead if I were doing long trips. Whereas in California and Washington State I definitely want a Model 3 next, or if I had to buy today, maybe an i3.
> The government has budgeted over all €600 million for electric car purchasing subsidies until 2019 and another €300 million for building electric car-charging stations in cities and highways.
It would be interesting to see how the 300€ M would be spent on electric car-charging stations. Would it cater to certain brands of cars? Would it lead to issues with "standards" for charging? That would give out the true intentions of this subsidy.
There are already a few common standards (at least here in Europe.)
For public charging station almost every manufacturer uses the TYPE2 (MENNEKES) plug, the actual charger is built into the car. For fast-charging there's the CHADEMO standard (japanese) which a lot of electric cars use and the newer 'European' Combo-plug (an extension to the TYPE2 plug) that is currently in-use by the BMW i3.
In The Netherlands (where I live) a company called FastNed is building a fast-charging network on the highways, they offer TYPE2 (for cars not having fast-charging support,) COMBO, and CHADEMO and usually also have a conversion plug for Tesla cars so you can also charge them there. I hope part of this subsidy allows companies like them to get stations along the German highways as well.
Only tangentially related but still interesting. This is IMO how most governments will unfortunately implement People QE once negative interests fail and the next crisis comes rolling in.
U think in the last crisis the US already implemented one thing similar called "cash for clunkers".
I'm pretty sure Cash for Clunkers was far worse, for it was pure Broken Windows theory of the economy. It not just took those cars off the street, one of the requirements was to destroy the engine.
Would have made more sense for the government to collect the inventory of clunkers and then auction them off in batches once new car sales recovered.
Also amusing, okay sort of horrifying, was panicked calls as the housing bubble popped by erstwhile free market types for the government to buy up and bulldoze 'excess housing inventory'
Were those "erstwhile free market types" in favor of Clinton using Carter's law to force banks to sell subprime mortgages in the first place? (Something that no friend of the free market George W. Bush thought was just dandy, but at least he didn't say anything as stupid as "I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing." but mistaking markers of the middle class for causes is very very stupid.)
Not that that is sufficient an answer, seeing as how many other countries also had property bubbles at the same time. Taking a step or six back, I see it going to the US running a huge deficit and the inevitable consequences of putting that sort of money in motion. In between are things like the IMF's insane response to Indonesia's short term liquidity problem when hot money fled it, which resulted in it's government/strong man being deposed, which the PRC took note of and acted accordingly.
Let's just hope that it doesn't end up like all other subsidies: the car maker increasing price to include this rebate and munching all the benefits from the government's help..
I still remember how photovoltaic subsidies in France ended up in the hands of the hands of the installers, who raised prices to match the government's help and fucked up consumers who thought they were getting a bargain when they were actually paying much more that real market prices.
It's for cars produced in Germany produced by Volkswagen, Daimler or BMW, so the car selection is very limited (several of the cars in the photo aren't subsidized because they cost more than €60k). Germany will subsidies €2000, the remaining rest (up to €2000) come from one of the three companies - basically a price discount.
Isn't there a similar subsidies/discount in California(?) where you get $5000 if you buy an electric car (manufacturer doesn't matter afaik)?
It's true but it's suspicious to require to sign a contract with government to have the money. They should instead have just publish a specification of what a car should have to qualify.
The fact that the 3 majors German car makers have already a head-start for this subvention whereas there are lots of electric car models from other car makers doesn't inspire trust in this process ...
What head-start? The market for electric vehicles almost does not exist. Almost nobody is buying them yet and it's not only a cost problem.
The money allocated will be available for 350000 cars. It will take some years to sell those. In 2014 the whole of Germany bought just 8522 electric cars plus 27435 hybrid cars... It's even worse, probably half of these cars were never used in Germany but exported...
Hybrid cars should either have their own maximum limit (after that limit the subsidy ends) or every manufacture should have their own limit (like it is in the US, the first 200k electric cars get the $7,500 off for every manucature). This would make sure that 90% of those cars are not hybrids that can barely drive 10miles on electric and people have a chance to get the subsidy when the bolt and tesla model 3 are available (I think the model 3 will not be available without reservation before the end of 2019). Currently, there are no purely electric cars that don't suck (the Nissan Leaf has a range of 100miles and looks kind of funny and is incredible expensive for what it has to offer; the model S/X are excluded from the subsidy because they are considered luxury cars).