Germany is doubling incentives offered to buyers of battery-powered cars as part of a 130 billion euro (USD146 billion) economic recovery package for the period through the end of next year, however the government refused pleas for the program to include internal-combustion cars.
This good news comes just hours after Germany also moved to have all petrol/fuel stations to offer Electric Vehicle (EV) charging. Details about the plan are not yet known, such as the timeline and type of required chargers. But EV advocates quickly praised the move as a huge boost to electric-car adoption.
German car manufacturers who have huge EV plans in the pipeline are now further motivated by this incentive and Chinese EV manufacturers are ramping up production to fill the gap until the rest get the showrooms filled with EV options for new car buyers.
BDEW, which is Germany’s association for energy and water industries, believes that at least 70,000 charging stations and 7,000 fast-charging stations are required to achieve a mass market for EVs in the country. BDEW reports that there are currently about 28,000 stations in Germany.
According to Reuters, electric cars made up only 1.8% of new passenger car registrations last year in Germany, with diesel and petrol cars accounting for 32% and 59.2%, respectively.
Buyers of full-electric cars with a net list price of up to 40,000 euros (RM194,576) will be eligible for a grant of 9,000 euros (RM43,554), including 6,000 euros from the government and 3,000 euros from automakers.
This above incentive threshold of 40,000 euros means that many high-priced EV’s from premium automakers such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi and Tesla are not eligible for the full incentive amount.
Tesla’s lowest priced Model 3 will make the incentive cut with its 39,990 euros price tag but Mercedes EQC which is priced from 71,590 euros and Audi’s e-tron which has a starting price of 69,900 euros will not be in the list of eligible EV’s.
The Volkswagen Group is on track to sell its range of EV’s as their selling prices are mostly within the given price range for the government grant.
With this German government EV grant, it is presumed that the rest of Europe will slowly follow along the same route and promote the adoption of EV’s in their respective markets and the installation of EV chargers at all fuel stations in the European Union.
Even with Covid-19 still taking its toll on all European nations, the move for cleaner emissions and lowering the dependency on fossil fuels continues. In May 2020, the British government also announced that they were also making EV development a priority.
A strong market at home is critical to growing UK EV manufacturing. To support this, the ban on new fossil-fuelled vehicles will be brought forward ten years, from 2040 to 2030. Norway and India have set conventional car bans from 2025 and 2030 respectively.
Competitors like China, California, and Germany are considering similarly ambitious EV sales targets. Targets alone will not be enough. Britain has also invested in battery innovation.
