Electric car purchase bonus: why subsidies are meaningful for Tesla drivers

05/04/2018

Electric Car Purchase Reward Why subsidies are useful for Tesla drivers

DPA

Electric car, charging station

The electric car purchase premium is pure sin for supporters of the slender state. How can the government interfere in such a consumer’s consumerism? And then even in such a dilettantische way, so that the “environmental bonus” (allegedly) little retrieved, but even is distributed to rich Tesla buyers,

In fact, purchase premium is unjustly a whipping victim. Although there are deadweight effects as with any such measure. And certainly, the scrapping bonus 2009 was “more popular” because the state paid them for every new car purchase.

The bottom line is that the electric bonus does exactly what it’s supposed to do: it obviously boosts the sales of electric cars at. This is shown by data from the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) and the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (Bafa), which accepts the applications.

In the summer of 2016, when the € 4,000 premium (€ 3,000 for plug-in hybrids) was first granted, the KBA registered around 1,800 registrations of electric cars a month. Since then it has gone up – to just under 7,000 registrations in March 2018. The market share increased noticeably from 0.6 to 2 percent. The number of applications for the electric car premium is also increasing in Germany (see chart).

The fact that Tesla drivers also benefit from the payment is easy to get over. Just 2 percent of the money goes to them. In addition, it brings the climate more if a thicker gasoline SUV is replaced by an electric car than a small car.

manager magazine online; Photo: Reuters

Approvals of electric cars Applications for support (click on the graph to enlarge)

More importantly, thanks to the purchase premium, Germany has made the leap from the European electric car outsider to the top midfield. This shows comparison with the other major car markets: In France, the rate has stagnated since mid-2016 at 1.7 percent, in Britain, it climbed from at least 1.5 to 1.9 percent.

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All these are still values at a low level. But the straw fire spreads and could develop long-term effect – which would be good for air, climate and the auto industry. Because the numbers are lapping. Of the year registered the KBA nearly 100,000 electric cars on German roads. This is a critical amount in sight that is increasingly putting municipalities and utilities under pressure to build a viable charging infrastructure.

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