Actually, the car industry should increase its e-car sales faster and faster. Almost all brands want to increase their share of e-cars rapidly, and electric vehicles should overtake combustion engines in the near future. The registration figures from the first half of the year aren’t bad at all – but that’s just “a look in the rear-view mirror,” Hildegard Müller (56), President of the Association of the German Automobile Industry (VDA), recently warned.
The view ahead, however, is clouded: numerous brands orders for electric cars collapse
, the transformation seems in danger. There are enough reasons for this: the economy is sputtering, consumers are more careful with their money, affordable e-models are still few and far between. Instead of itself, the auto industry sees in Germany but above all another actor with a duty: politics.
The calls are getting louder that the federal government must change its funding policy if it does not want to miss its target of 15 million electric cars on Germany’s roads by 2030. “Berlin is clearly required,” said a high-ranking Volkswagen-Manager recently in conversation with manager magazin.
Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (53) reduced the so-called environmental bonus at the turn of the year. Instead of up to 6,000 euros as before, there is now “only” a maximum subsidy of 4,500 euros from the state for an electric car. Plug-in hybrids have not been subsidized at all since January 2023. After a year-end rally in 2022, the market subsequently came under increasing pressure.
“Compared to the previous year, we are selling around 50 percent fewer electric cars,” says Ein Renault-dealer. A Skoda colleague even reports that his incoming orders for battery vehicles are “continuing to approach zero”. The Central Association of the German Motor Trade (ZDK) speaks of “industry-wide more than a third” less demand for electric cars than in the previous year. “The federal government should therefore continue to maintain a positive and reliable funding environment in order to ensure the ramp-up of electromobility,” says ZDK President Arne Joswig (60).
And the next cuts in subsidies are already imminent: the subsidy for fleet customers will expire on August 31, after which only private buyers will receive the environmental bonus. In 2024, the state subsidy for them will drop to 3,000 euros, and only e-cars with a net list price of up to 45,000 euros will then be subsidised. The upper limit is currently 60,000 euros. “One should see that premium manufacturers will not be completely left out of the funding in the future,” criticizes one Audi-Manager. In 2025, the government wants to completely abolish the environmental bonus.
From the point of view of the industry, the cuts come at an inopportune time. A few weeks ago, Volkswagen had already throttled production in Emden due to the sluggish demand, and there could also be cuts in Zwickau after the company holidays. “We see that electromobility is unfortunately not accepted in the way we all – including politicians – imagined,” said Volkswagen’s works council chief Daniela Cavallo (48) recently to the “Braunschweiger Zeitung”.
Even the FDP blocked it
Efforts to get new funding impulses from industry have recently increased significantly, observers report. To date, however, the car lobby has not had much success. Even the more car-friendly FDP blocks more direct subsidies for e-cars. “I see the manufacturers as having a duty to offer cheaper cars,” said Bernd Reuther (52), spokesman for transport policy for the FDP parliamentary group “Handelsblatt”
. A criticism that the VDA does not want to let stand. “By the end of 2024, German manufacturers will be offering around 170 e-models in all segments worldwide,” the association announced. “There is something for every need and every taste.”
The Federal Government is making things too easy for the “Federal Association for Emobility”. Although one shares “the assessment that the German automotive industry has overslept the change”, it is precisely for this reason that it now needs “guidance if it wants to continue to play an industrial pillar in Germany”. Association leader Markus Emmert criticized the course of “the toxic decision-making weakness” of politics. As measures against the e-car doldrums, he proposes, among other things, relaunching the environmental bonus and aligning it with energy efficiency, linking subsidies for private charging stations to the purchase of e-cars, basing a penalty on combustion engines on the displacement and abolishing all diesel subsidies.
According to a spokeswoman, the VDA is primarily focusing on framework conditions such as the expansion of the charging infrastructure and power grids and affordable electricity prices in talks with politicians. Of the one million charging points in Germany announced for 2030, there are currently only around 88,000, which shows “the great need to catch up”. In addition, according to the VDA, the electricity tax should be reduced from the current 2 cents per kilowatt hour to the European minimum rate of 0.05 cents and the concession fees of 1.66 cents per kilowatt hour should be completely eliminated.
Federal Minister of Economics Habeck is still hardly moving, but the emerging debate does not seem to leave him completely cold. According to that “Daily Mirror”
he wants to at least take away the fear in the car industry that the subsidy pot could run out this year. Of the 2.1 billion euros that the ministry had earmarked for the environmental bonus in its budget this year, more than 1.7 billion euros had already been used up, mainly due to the many applications in December 2022. Habeck now wants to increase the funds “by at least 400 million euros”.