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German government expands subsidies for electric cars

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Re: German government expands subsidies for electric cars

#81

Post by C1sc0cat »

the-dude wrote: post #28
fluffything wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only VW, any company can opt-in to the subsidies: the state pays half and the company the other half. What's funny is how the requirement of a <= 60k EUR car price means that those buying a Tesla won't get any subsidies. It's kind of understandable though: in Germany most cars are sold in the 10-20k EUR range, so it would be political suicide to create a subsidy to pay for what most citizens consider a luxury. Su…

In NL we have this subsidy for the rich.

A lot of these electricity subsidies are for the rich or well off in the UK you could get a twenty year guaranteed 8% return on investment of 10k for solar.

Which is great you like Me or my parents who have a spare 8-10k - if your a single mom living in rented accommodation who buys her electricity via a key not so much.

Re: German government expands subsidies for electric cars

#82

Post by mooktakim »

lm28469 wrote: post #39
mooktakim wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solution to these problems will come. Its a chicken & egg problem. I live in a flat in London and thinking of similar issues with electric cars. Maybe 20min supercharging every couple of weeks is enough for my weekend driving. I'm hoping soon every lamp post will have a charging plug.

> I'm hoping soon every lamp post will have a charging plug. I don't see any major city doing that anytime soon. The grid is not ready, power plants are not ready, it would cost billions to rewire everything, especially in old European towns. And even more for germany since they're shutting down coal and nuclear right now. It's not a big issue though, we should focus on getting rid of personal cars and that's somethi…

Firstly, when they add these types of charging stations, they will make the grid ready.

Secondly, grid has a lot of capacity. Its like motorways, most of the time its under utilised. Only during peak time that it is full capacity. Think of the grid in a similar way. Its mostly under utilised except for peak time. All we need to do is make use of it outside peak time (with batteries) and suddenly we have double or triple the capacity.

Re: German government expands subsidies for electric cars

#83

Post by b3orn »

arethuza wrote: post #51
k__ wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. On the other hand, at least VW is partly owned by the state. Also, I think it's good to get into renewables for the climate and to cut the monarchs and autocrats off from their money in the long run.

Looks like VW is actually more owned by Qatar than any part of the German state: https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/InvestorRelations/shares/sha... Edit: Saxony does get more voting rights than Qatar.

You mean Lower Saxony. Saxony is a different state on the other side of Germany, that has no voting rights in VW.

Re: German government expands subsidies for electric cars

#84

Post by dsfyu404ed »

24gttghh wrote: post #49
Vysero wrote: post #35

I would love to be able to buy an electric car here in Montana (US) but how would I charge it? Either way I couldn't afford it. Even at a conservative estimate of 20k that's still too much considering I can go out and buy a used car that gets 20mpg for 5k and keep it for the next 100k miles. I realize this is a bit off topic but I get so bitter when I heard about other countries converting to electric. I just wish so…

No offense, but what hypothetical car are you buying for $5K that will last another 100K miles? You can get used Nissan Leaf's in the price-range you're wanting. In Spokane tho I guess... https://www.cars.com/for-sale/searchresults.action/?dealerTy... Or used Prius's in Missoula: https://www.missoulanissan.com/VehicleSearchResults?search=p... edit: I am genuinely curious about the $5K car good for 100K miles.

Pretty much any old POS with 100k on it will last to 200k if you change the fluids on some semblance of a schedule. Somewhere north of 200k is where most automatic transmissions wear out.

Re: German government expands subsidies for electric cars

#85

Post by wongarsu »

blattimwind wrote: post #53
wongarsu wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course a giant company like Volkswagen won't turn around on a dime, it will be a slow transition; and probably never a complete one. But just from the fact that electric cars have a 5 times higher share of new registrations than of existing cars shows that it's a growing market, and adoption curves usually grow exponentially until you approach market saturation. Volkswagen is doing a lot to get a bigger piece of t…

> Of course a giant company like Volkswagen won't turn around on a dime, it will be a slow transition; and probably never a complete one. Yes, there is a long tail of applications where EVs are not a reasonable proposition. Emergency services (police, medical, fire fighting) come to mind immediately. There is pretty much no way you can built an all-electric fire truck with batteries that isn't much worse than ICE fir…

Most fire trucks in Germany would actually work well as EV: they rarely carry water, just pumps (places without hydrants are required by law to have water stored in a tank or lake); range isn't an issue since any place is reached by emergency services in under 10 minutes, even accounting for large scale operations that's not a lot of distance unless we are talking highly specialized vehicles; and the better acceleration of EVs might be a major speed boost. Similar reasoning applies to ambulances: small distances but high acceleration requirements.

Of course in sparsely populated places like much of the US this looks completely different. Another class of vehicle that will hold onto ICE for a long while will be farming vehicles. I don't see a farmer recharging his combine harvester in the middle of the field until we have made significant advances in battery tech.

Re: German government expands subsidies for electric cars

#86

Post by devmunchies »

newnewpdro wrote: post #70
GrayTextIsTruth wrote: post #55

Not electric motorcycles? They are electric AND require less energy to move from point A to B.

And substantially less safe...

And it'd be safer if more people were subsidized to buy them. Safety in numbers.

And aren't we in a climate crisis? If its a question of environmentalism my 125cc minibike gets 150mpg. Its greener than a Tesla.

Re: German government expands subsidies for electric cars

#87

Post by reacweb »

gibolt wrote: post #71
thinkcontext wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> typical company cars that will very rarely use the electric engine This is backwards, plugin hybrids rarely use their gas engines. BMW 330e 2020 has a 20 mile electric only range (about the same as Prius Prime). Average German car trip distance is 11 miles [0] Even if the trip is longer than 20 miles, it will only use the gas after the electric runs out. [0] Large PDF, average car trip distance on page 50 https://s…

It should be that way, in a perfect world. I believe there was a study/survey in the UK. Business owners take the extra subsidies to get a cheaper fleet. They found that only a tiny portion had even unwrapped the charging cables, treating them just like an ICE vehicle. Can't seem to find the link :/

My brother has one. He always uses electric first.

Re: German government expands subsidies for electric cars

#88

Post by C1sc0cat »

richardknop wrote: post #63
thinkcontext wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla Model 3 has a base price of 44.5K EUR. https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/13/tesla-model-3-vs-bmw-3-...

That's an expensive car in European standards. 20k is what most people pay for a car here. 45k car is a luxury imho.

In which European state is this I bet there is a difference between the ex Warsaw pact sates where a Trabant or a 2 generation old Fiat was a luxury, and the Rich parts of Germany or the UK

Re: German government expands subsidies for electric cars

#89

Post by the-dude »

radicalbyte wrote: post #30
the-dude wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In NL we have this subsidy for the rich.

The people I see driving around in Tesla (or large Audi/Volvo) here aren't really rich, more have a decent job and a willingness to spend a substantial amount of money on a car. I don't understand it personally, I prefer cycling and having my mortgage paid off but everyone to their own :) I guess if you're in your 50s then you paid very little for your house so it makes sense to pay the 1200 EUR a month net for a car…

I don't know the numbers, but a Tesla is specifically attractive for a business owner. The subsidy is absurd.

The government has acknowledged this now, and it will tapered down / abolished. Not sure.

Re: German government expands subsidies for electric cars

#90

Post by skybrian »

gibolt wrote: post #71
thinkcontext wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> typical company cars that will very rarely use the electric engine This is backwards, plugin hybrids rarely use their gas engines. BMW 330e 2020 has a 20 mile electric only range (about the same as Prius Prime). Average German car trip distance is 11 miles [0] Even if the trip is longer than 20 miles, it will only use the gas after the electric runs out. [0] Large PDF, average car trip distance on page 50 https://s…

It should be that way, in a perfect world. I believe there was a study/survey in the UK. Business owners take the extra subsidies to get a cheaper fleet. They found that only a tiny portion had even unwrapped the charging cables, treating them just like an ICE vehicle. Can't seem to find the link :/

While that's unfortunate, I'm wondering how long these fleets keep cars before they're sold? It seems like this would improve availability of plug-in hybrids on the used car market.
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