
Germany to Give €1B Electric Car Subsidy - jseliger
http://www.electric-vehicle.co/2016/04/germany-to-give-1-billion-electric-car.html
======
Matt3o12_
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).

~~~
yardie
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.

For the moment, it's a decent compromise.

~~~
daveguy
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.

~~~
yardie
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.

------
olex
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.

~~~
Tomte
> One can say with pretty high confidence that this is done with the explicit
> goal of excluding Tesla's Model S and Model X.

One cannot.

Tesla loves to spin it that way, but forgets to mention that cars from other
manufacturers, including Germany's BMW are also affected by that limit.

The simple, albeit boring, truth is that subsidizing the toys of the super-
rich would be very unpopular.

If you have the money to buy a 80000 Euro car, you have the money to pay for
it yourself.

~~~
taf2
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?

~~~
Matthias247
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.

------
aluhut
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...

~~~
tirant
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.

~~~
aluhut
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.

------
tiatia
Pff. Nothing.

Germany to Give €100B refugee subsidy

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-germany-
co...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-germany-costs-
idUSKCN0Y50DY)

------
lumberjack
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€.

Any others in this price range (<25.000€)?

~~~
franzpeterfolz
Just take a look at normal cars.

E.g. Ford Focus Sedan is starting at 17.000$, 2.0 Liter Engine, 160
horsepower.

Now take a Ford Focus from Germany with a comparable Engine (1.5L EcoBoost
with 150 horsepower) Starting price is at 26.500$.

Audi A3 in Germany is starting at about 26.800 Euro.

Cars in the United States are way cheaper than in Germany.

So 4.000 Euro is quite some money to get EVs and normal cars into the same
pricerange.

------
rdl
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.

~~~
franzpeterfolz
So the German Prices 1 KwH is about .28$ 1 gallon is 3.78 liter 1 liter gas
about 1.52$ 1 gallon is now at 5.70$

What are the prices in the USA right now.

The electricity prices include about .20 Euro taxes and subsidies for
windharvesting and solar etc.

~~~
rdl
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.

~~~
ido
If you lived (in a decent sized city) in Germany, you could do without a car
altogether thus helping the environment even further :)

------
denzil_correa
> 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.

~~~
Huppie
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.

------
Inthenameofmine
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".

~~~
hga
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.

~~~
Gibbon1
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'

~~~
hga
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.

------
xgbi
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.

------
frik
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)?

~~~
lispm
It's open for all producers, not only German. It is expected that other
companies will join.

~~~
Rexxar
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 ...

~~~
lispm
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...

------
denzil_correa
> So they probably just picked a round number that sounded nice.

Except that in this case it specifically excludes all car models from Tesla.

~~~
Tomte
You just love to spread this misinformation, do you?

Strangely it also excludes the BMW i8 and the Porsche Cayenne in their hybrid
variants.

Obviously the German government is doing all it can to thwart those evil
German carmakers. Oh, and Tesla, right.

~~~
denzil_correa
False Dilemma Fallacy.

I said Tesla's models are excluded. I never said BMW and Porsche hybrid
(that's almost clutching straws - pun intended) aren't excluded.

~~~
Tomte
You claimed protectionism, i.e. excluding foreign cars in order to boost sales
of domestic cars.

Turns out German cars are excluded as well. Not Germany's fault that Tesla's
affordable car is so late.

But you still play the language-lawyering thing to try and hide your ulterior
motives and intentions.

~~~
denzil_correa
Reading Comprehension?

> You claimed protectionism, i.e. excluding foreign cars in order to boost
> sales of domestic cars.

I said IF the number is arbitrary, it could be deliberate.

> Turns out German cars are excluded as well

I never said they weren't. In fact, what percentage of German cars are
excluded? If they're just a few it could still be a protectionist move.

> But you still play the language-lawyering thing to try and hide your
> ulterior motives and intentions.

Your issue of interpretation of English isn't me having ulterior motives and
intentions.

~~~
Tomte
Liar: "One of the reasonable explanations, prima facie, that it is to exclude
Tesla specifically."

~~~
denzil_correa
"One of the" not the ONLY. Also, "prima facie" \- not definite.

Reading comprehension failure.

~~~
Tomte
You're a failure as a human being.

~~~
dang
This is unacceptable on HN. We ban people who attack others like this, so
please don't do it again.

