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German government expands subsidies for electric cars

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Re: German government expands subsidies for electric cars

#111

Post by devmunchies »

newnewpdro wrote: post #106
devmunchies wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Motorcycles will never be as safe as cars, period. Source: an experienced rider with over 100,000 miles riding all over the USA and teacher of multiple new riders.

Duh, man. Not once did I say they were safer than cars.

> over 100,000 miles riding all over the USA

Yeah that's actually a good argument for not subsidizing them since it encourages non-green behavior—driving all over the country on joy rides.

Re: German government expands subsidies for electric cars

#112

Post by thinkcontext »

dillz wrote: post #102
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…

If I understand that correctly, the survey includes all kinds of trips, including short daily drives grocery shopping and commutes. I think typical business trips in Germany are significantly above that average, but I might be wrong. edit: Anecdotal: My father-in-law is a typical German field staff. Average daily driving distance is ~60 miles. And he certainly would not charge the car at home over night, from his pri…

Do you have any numbers that back up what percentage of German driving is covered by what you are talking about? I gave numbers for average German driving, therefore more than 50% of German driving trips can be handled with no gas by a plugin hybrid. This cannot be considered "rarely" as was your original contention. Even your 60 mile example, 1/3 of the distance being covered by electric is not "rarely".

Do plugin hybrids or EVs solve all current transportation problems for all transport distances? No. Is there a issue with subsidizing luxury vehicles? Yes. But I wanted to correct your incorrect statement about plugin hybrids.

Re: German government expands subsidies for electric cars

#114

Post by pkaye »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #81
the-dude wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> buys her electricity via a key not so much.

What does "via a key" mean?

Re: German government expands subsidies for electric cars

#115

Post by blattimwind »

wongarsu wrote: post #85
blattimwind wrote: post #53

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. 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 accelerat…

Tanklöschfahrzeuge normally do use their internal tanks, at least in my area. This makes sense because it reduces response time and you can start pumping out water immediately while the connection to the water line is made.

The problem is not so much the driving range, that is true. The problem is that taking out a fire might take 10 minutes, 10 hours or 10 days. The electric truck is fine for 10 minutes, but it won't be fine when you have to stay on site for a couple hours.

Re: German government expands subsidies for electric cars

#116

Post by the-dude »

pkaye wrote: post #114
C1sc0cat wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> buys her electricity via a key not so much. What does "via a key" mean?

I am not sure of the current mechanism, but I know the UK has "coin" systems for gas ( heating ). So you would buy a coin, put it into your meter at home, and get a certain amount of gas.

This is, of course, tailored at the poor.

Re: German government expands subsidies for electric cars

#117

Post by dillz »

thinkcontext wrote: post #112
dillz wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understand that correctly, the survey includes all kinds of trips, including short daily drives grocery shopping and commutes. I think typical business trips in Germany are significantly above that average, but I might be wrong. edit: Anecdotal: My father-in-law is a typical German field staff. Average daily driving distance is ~60 miles. And he certainly would not charge the car at home over night, from his pri…

Do you have any numbers that back up what percentage of German driving is covered by what you are talking about? I gave numbers for average German driving, therefore more than 50% of German driving trips can be handled with no gas by a plugin hybrid. This cannot be considered "rarely" as was your original contention. Even your 60 mile example, 1/3 of the distance being covered by electric is not "rarely". Do plugin h…

You are right, the average car trip is covered by plugin hybrids. I was referring to business trips, i.e. the typical clientele of the car types in my OP. The average business driving distance (not commute) is twice the average of all drives. (source: Chapter 3.2 in [1]) If only businessmen/fieldstaff/etc. are taken into account and no craftsmen/tradesmen numbers would be even higher. (read: drivers of said premium hybrids vs. box wagons)

[1] https://www.adac.de/_mmm/pdf/statistik_mobilitaet_in_deutsch...

Re: German government expands subsidies for electric cars

#118

Post by sooenkill »

raxxorrax wrote: post #95
gibolt wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The German auto industry is 5% of their economy, employing nearly a million people. Imagine the fire (no pun intended) Tesla is setting under them, as the premium (most profitable) sales plummet across the industry. They decided to subsidize the industry to drive growth and help their big players quickly get to scale where they can make a profit. The alternative is they cease to exist and Germany suffers. I'm all for…

There is some truth to that but they already do make insane profits. This is just another icing on the cake that primarily tries to incentivize people that are already well off (as anyone that buys an electric cars right now). While they certainly have deficiencies in the software department compared to Tesla and Germany not being the best place to test autonomous vehicles, they had electric cars for years now. The p…

"They had electric cars for years." Yeah sure bro! You wanna buy our ugly looking i3? Nah too crazy design do you like the looks of any our 184 diesel models? havent really had much choice for evs

Re: German government expands subsidies for electric cars

#119

Post by dna_polymerase »

UserIsUnused wrote: post #42
benjaminsuch wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "fucks over"? People want to reduce CO2, they want a greener Germany, a greener world and more importantly reach the climate agreement. Subsidizing electric cars is one step towards it.

The money put in subsidizing electric vehicles is more well spend in public transportation. An 30 electric cars are not as green as a single bus.

Subsidizing public transportation will never happen at scale in Germany, this piece should be proof enough for that.

Re: German government expands subsidies for electric cars

#120

Post by soperj »

JTon wrote: post #56
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…

I cannot confirm this first hand, but I've heard water cooler stories about Tesla software nerfing the range of their model 3s in Canada. This lowers the base price of vehicle enough to be eligible for a federal subsidy. Once the subsidy is claimed, the owner can buy a software upgrade from the dealer to restore the model 3 to full capability. Pretty sly trick.

No, that model isn't really even for sale here in Canada. It only exists for the subsidy. The way the subsidy was worded was that if the lowest price of a vehicle was under a threshold then you'd get the subsidy on the other versions, so they created a basically unpurchasable version for that purpose. (I believe you actually have to email the company to purchase it. I doubt there's been even one purchase).
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