Berlin defends electric car support schemes

The German government has defended support schemes for electric cars and said they will help it reach a target of having 1mn such vehicles registered by 2020.

Berlin was responding to a question submitted by the Green Party in the lower house of parliament querying the effectiveness of the schemes.

Germany on 2 July launched a scheme granting a €4,000 bonus to buyers of electric cars and €3,000 to buyers of plug-in hybrids, with the government and participating car manufacturers splitting the costs. The scheme ends once it reaches a subsidy cap of €1.2bn or in 2019 at the latest.

But the Green Party queried the effectiveness of the buyer's bonus, as federal export control office Bafa had received only 2,650 applications for electric cars and 1,801 for plug-in hybrids as of the end of September. The finance ministry expects to help fund 400,000 cars through the scheme and had expected a high number of applications in the first few months.

The government argued in its response, published yesterday, that it is too early to assess the attractiveness of the scheme. Electric vehicles continue to be at a disadvantage to diesel and gasoline cars, it said, because they are more expensive, there is a limited availability of popular electric car models, the mileage range of electric cars is limited and because the infrastructure of charging stations is insufficient. The buyer's bonus is only one way of easing these disadvantages, and the government has set up programmes to boost the number of charging stations and the extension of vehicle tax exemptions for electric cars and plug-in hybrids to 10 years from five years presently — as passed by the lower house of parliament on 22 September — complementing Berlin's effort to increase demand in the electric car sector, it said.

The government expects that these support mechanisms will be enough to reach its joint target with the country's car manufacturing industry to have 1mn electric cars and plug-in hybrids registered by 2020, it said.

As of 1 January, a total of 61.5mn cars were registered in Germany, of which 25,502 were electric cars, data from motor transport authority KBA show. The government put the number of registered plug-in hybrids at 19,000 in April when announcing the buyers' bonus scheme.

A total of 7,678 new electric cars were registered in January-September, with 4,929 plug-in hybrid vehicles registered in April-September.

The Green Party also queried whether the government can confirm reports that the price of electric cars and plug-in hybrids has hardly fallen since the buyers' bonus scheme launched in July. Car manufacturers have to reduce their net list prices by at least €2,000 for electric and by at least €1,500 for plug-in hybrids. But manufacturers cannot influence the retail price set by car dealerships, the government said in its response. And several manufacturers and car dealers had cut their prices for electric cars and plug-in hybrids by up to €5,000 in anticipation of the new subsidy scheme ahead of its launch in July, the government said.