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Germany Plans $1.4 Billion In Incentives For Electric Cars (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Bloomberg article: German Chancellor Angela Merkel's government reached a deal with automakers to jointly spend 1.2 billion euros ($1.4 billion) on incentives to boost sluggish electric-car sales. Buyers will be able to receive as much as 4,000 euros in rebates to help offset the higher price of an electric vehicle, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said at a press conference in Berlin. Purchasers of hybrid cars will get as much as 3,000 euros off the price. The industry will shoulder 50 percent of the cost. The program is set to start in May, pending approval from the German parliament's budget committee, he said. "The goal is to move forward as quickly as possible on electric vehicles," Schaeuble told reporters, adding that the aim is to begin offering the incentives next month. "With this, we are giving an impetus."
You have to generate the power somewhere. If not in an internal combustion, then where? We know Europe is terrified of nuclear and wants to phase it out. Solar and wind aren't viable yet. It sounds like they'll be burning some more coal in power plants.
to give to the rich that can afford those things. They're emulating America.
How so? Do you think that EVs will merely sit in the passing lane?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Interesting that while many other countries have had incentives in place for 5 yrs or more, Germany has waited until its domestic automakers got on board.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
True - I have an EV and have found here in the UK it has made me more conscious of speed on the motorway - but I use less power and am safer as a result
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLCdP6sMN9k
Captcha: burned
Last time i drove on the autobahn (about 6 months ago) everyone was already driving pretty slowly. About 120km/h. Sure there was the odd fast driver, not many compared to say 8-10 years ago.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
"You have to generate the power somewhere. If not in an internal combustion, then where?"
That *somewhere* is at power plants but lots of Germans have rooftop solar so perhaps self-generation will offset much of it.
We're also a long way from the time where EVs make up enough of cars on the road to be a significant draw on the grid, if well-managed.
California has about 200,000 plug-in EVs, roughly 1/2 the US total and they're not building power plants or suffering rolling blackouts because of demand.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
You are an idiot
Didn't Germany also commit to shutting down all their Nuke Power and not building anymore? Wonder were all that electricity will come from, only so many places in Germany for wind and hydro...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Never understood government paying people to buy stuff? No wonder governments are broke. Whatever happened to selling a product people want to buy without government aid? I can imagine down the road how much government funds will go into building more power plants to feed all those electric cars charging at night.
And what effects will it have on cyber.
The electric car is going nowhere unless they call it a cyber car and create various cyber named organizations to defend it from cyber attacks and cyber criminals. People want to hear more about the cyber.
Someone will come up with something.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I'm not giving up my car just because it has a V8 instead of an electric motor. If i got an eletric motor with adapter to the TH400 or straight to the drive shaft, batteries, control electronics, a power socket, wires and an outside speaker system to simulate the V8 sound for that 4000€ incentive, i guess i would convert the car. Well. that would also require laws to change aswell. How about that?
Merkel is letting her mask slip, revealing herself as a traditional East German. Letting people have actual cars (as opposed to glorified golfcarts) is verboten unless one is a member of the nomenklatura.
This kind of stuff belongs to the GDR era, not the modern day.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Just get the I4+Turbo and you'll get a fake V6 sound. Not perfect, but that's what's here today.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The autobahn is just the German version of the USA's interstate system. Half of it has speed limits below 81 mph, and the other half has an "advisory limit" of about 81 mph. The sections with speed limits are dispersed, so it's not like you can go for very long before hitting one which slows all the traffic down. If you go over 81 mph in the areas with "advisory limits" only and you have an accident, you're automatically considered partially if not completely at fault. The fastest 6 lane free-flowing section of the autobahn averages about 88 mph. That's because it really isn't safe to drive most cars faster than that. The aerodynamics make it difficult, but a side-wind can push the broad side of the car hard enough to make steering against it quickly enough to counter-act the push very difficult as well. Imagine an 18-wheeler 3 feet to your left on a curved road as a strong wind blows you towards it while you're driving 90 mph. Most people that drive on the autobahn just want to get from A to B, not use it as a drag strip or you know... die because they were driving foolishly.
How would Teslas which have a max speed of about 130 mph make any difference? There are plenty of hybrids on the roads in Atlanta, GA -- and to see someone driving under 80 mph on the interstates near Atlanta is really rare. It's understood everyone goes at least 10 mph over the posted limit around Atlanta. The same goes for parts of Knoxville, TN. In those parts, the majority of Americans are driving the same if not faster than they would be on the Autobahn.
If anything, hybrids and electrics are an improvement -- especially over old POS cars like a 1950s or 1960s oldsmobile with a top speed of 97 mph that burns gas so fast, you'd think there was a hole in the tank. A 2002/2003 Ford Taurus with a top speed of 139 mph technically could beat a Tesla (after it catches up) in a long stretch, but it would burn through fuel and need a pit-stop before the Tesla... assuming it didn't fly off the road first as it becomes very hard to control over 90 mph since it lacks the aerodynamics of a Tesla.
I get that a lot of initial hybrid users stared at their dashboard trying to hypermile and that used to slow everyone to a crawl, but I think that fad is pretty much over -- especially now that hybrids are more mainstream and gas prices have plummeted.
Make electric cars cheaper without sacrificing so much range so they have parity with gas powered cars. Then take all the money you would have put in to incentives and create infrastructure. Stop paying people to buy in to technology and start making the technology desirable to have.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Who said it wouldn't be from combustion? Even if you assume that this is all from combusting something, power station turbines, wires, substations, chargers and electric motors are still a much much much more efficient way of moving a vehicle than petrol tankers, engines, and mechanical transmissions.
Doesn't matter. At worst, it's a little delay in cleaning up, but electric cars are more efficient than burners. Internal combustion will never pass 50% efficiency. A power plant would be above 90%. Then, the electricity lost to get oil from the fields, refined, and into a car is greater than that to move the electricity from generation into the batteries (including battery loss). So even if you used "dirty" generation, you are still twice as good as internal combustion, and that's worst case. It only gets better from there. And it's much easier to upgrade the grid than billions of cars.
Also peak car charging is at lowest power usage time, so the baseload will already cover it. It's essentially "free" power, given the constraint on generation already.
Learn to love Alaska
I wonder how much of that money is coming from VW?
So?
California has about 200,000 plug-in EVs, roughly 1/2 the US total and they're not building power plants or suffering rolling blackouts because of demand.
Most vehicle charging is done at night with baseload power. So rather than more power plants, we just better utilize the power plants that we already have. My wife has a Tesla, and it is programmed to start charging at 2am. We have demand billing, so we save money by using baseload power. A full charge (240 miles) costs us about $6.
Until significant advances are made in battery technology, electric cars will be hamstrung by limited range and extremely expensive regular battery replacement.
Internal combustion will never pass 50% efficiency. A power plant would be above 90%.
ICEs are typically less than 20% efficient, and some more is lost in the transmission system (which electric cars don't need). The best gas turbine power plants are less than 60% efficient, and will never get near 90%.
They should cut the subsidies on the hybrids. At the least, cut em next year to zero.
And then on the batteries, give them based on the battery size. The bigger the battery, the more subsidy they should have. The reason is that EVs charging at nighttime will help balance the electrical demand/grid.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yes, cars like the e-golf will be slow, so instead, you want to buy a decent EV like Tesla. Considering that it blows the doors off all cars in its class (such as MB's S Class, Audi A5, etc), I would not worry too much about it slowing down the autobahn
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You achieve much higher levels oaf efficiency with power stations, by associating industries that need heat for their processes. So you pipe waste heat to those places, reducing waste quite significantly. Similar can be done with desalination plants in the opposite direction, making them more efficient by using their waste water to for cooling, recovering energy lost in pumping. So immediate match associate power plants with desalination plants and they both become far more efficient.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
So, rather than just being 2x more efficient baseline, electric vehicles are 3x as efficient? Doesn't change the result.
Learn to love Alaska
Great non sequitur. They are only good for 90% of the people 99% of the time, we shouldn't allow them to be sold. Would that make you feel better?
And the battery myth has moved from myth to outright lie. You know they aren't that bad when it takes people lying about them to find anything bad to say about them.
Learn to love Alaska
So, rather than just being 2x more efficient baseline, electric vehicles are 3x as efficient?
That's about right. ICE+transmission delivers about 15% of fuel energy to the wheels. A gas turbine power plant + battery + charger delivers about 45%. So you get about three times the miles for a given amount of fuel. But gas/coal is much cheaper than gasoline, so the cost is much less than a third. Also, gas and coal are produced domestically, generating jobs for Americans. Petroleum is often from Iran/Venezuela/Russia or other people that hate us.
Here in Germany, the main issue why people do not buy electric cars is not that they are slightly more expensive than standard cars (talking about stuff like the e-Golf, not Tesla), it is that the infrastructure is not there and so electric cars are not practical. People look at electric cars and ask "where am I supposed to charge that?". Many people park their car on the streets, so they simply cannot charge it over night, or they have a garage with no suitable power outlet, so that the incentives would have to be enough to buy the expensive electric car AND pay for all the work to put a suitable outlet into the garage. 4000 Euros in incentives won't magically make a power outlet appear on the street where you park your car over night. So all these incentives will do is make rich people (who can afford it anyway) save 4000 Euros when they buy a Tesla or i8 as a 2nd or 3rd car.
California *is* suffering blackouts in summer and they are building their icky power plants in the neighboring states and Mexico.
If not in an internal combustion, then where?
Thorium is the source of and solution to the world's green and nuclear energy problem and creating a demand for Thorium will bring back manufacturing jobs, since it's found where rare earth minerals are and due to strict regulations against it despite thorium not being a source of weapons grade fissile material, not water soluble, it's heavy so it doesn't blow away... Companies can't compete with China on manufacturing because regulations make it too expensive to pull rare earths out of the ground and manufacturing needs to be near its source material like neodymium and dysprosium which are found in proportion to thorium and are needed to make everything from cars to smart phones, from wind generators to solar panels. Lessening the thorium regulations is basically the only thing a country has to do to become great.
But guess who's selling Russia USA's rare earth mineral rights (on wild life refuges and other federal land)? Hint, her released emails reveal the reason the Hammond Ranch came under attack by the BLM: The ranch is in the middle of the federal land promised to non-NATO countries.
Germany gets 80% of its power from fossil fuel. It's more efficient to burn it at a plant than in a cylinder however.
Still no love for electric scooters/bikes then? The vast majority of journeys could be done on a scooter, would take up far less road space (easing congestion and thus reducing wasted energy with stop/start or idling) and wouldn't involve moving a tonne of steel to get a single person and their sandwich from A to B. They're vastly cheaper than cars too, so a subsidy for them would help ten times as many consumers.
"California *is* suffering blackouts"
Is that so? I hadn't heard.
Sounds like it's more related to AC demand than pesky EVs.
The historic peak demand for the state fluctuates from year to year and 2014 was about the same as 2006 and only slightly higher than 2007
http://www.energyalmanac.ca.go...
The data I've found doesn't show dramatic increases in state-wide electricity consumption over the past couple decades so even the most EV-friendly large jurisdiction in the world is not yet affected by the theoretical demands of large numbers of electric vehicles.
http://www.ecdms.energy.ca.gov...
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
She has a Tesla? What do you drive?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
She has a Tesla? What do you drive?
I drive an old beat up minivan. She won't let me drive the Tesla, but sometimes she lets me sit in the passenger seat. Free advice: Don't marry a woman who earns more than you do.
More to the point: If they don't do this, where will the fuel for their ICE cars come from?
Yeah, they are a fad, like mobile phones, flatscreen TVs, solar panels and the internet.
- Chuq
Driving on the autobahn is also much more organized than any american highway. Slow traffic in the right-most lane, mid-speed traffic in the middle, and passing in the left lane. NOBODY passes on the right & very rarely do you have somebody that noddles along in the middle lane instead of getting over to the right like they are supposed to.
Have an electric car & want to go a little slower so you can get decent range out of it? Simple, just stay in the right-most lane. Typical speed there is around 100kph (~60mph)
I don't think he said anything like that.
Unless range can get to 900-1000km, while being driven in a normal way, and batteries are guaranteed (by manufacturer) to last the for a 12-16 year lifecycle of a typical vehicle, I can't see electric vehicles ever being practical. Infrastructure wouldn't be such a barrier for me, but I wouldn't pay more than an extra €1000 for one. Today, the battery technology simply isn't anywhere near ready. The current models of electric car are for super wealthy people, who have some kind of environmental guilt, and little concept of the real lifecycle cost of these vehicles (both environmental, and financial).
Well, the autobahn has a speed limit of 130km/h, and I think most electrics can reach that ...
... to own electric cars? Why should the 99% of Germany people who aren't going to buy an electric car (probably because they can't afford it!) have to pay extra taxes so a tiny minority can 'virtue signal' about how 'progressive' they are?
The key benefit of electric anything is decoupling the means of producing energy from the means of consuming energy. Power line and even battery efficiency are sufficiently high that you generally gain more than you lose by making the power generation remote (not to mention the local improvements in air quality - even if it were less efficient, moving the exhaust fumes out of built-up areas would be a win for humans).
If you remember the introduction of unleaded petrol, it was a long and painful switchover. New cars only took unleaded, older ones typically couldn't. It took a few years for petrol stations to set up the distribution network and get pumps connected to an additional storage reservoir well enough that you could guarantee that you'd be able to fill up your tank in most places. The switch to electric is likely to be at least as long and painful, but once it's done then it's very easy to switch the battery storage technology (individual cars can do it and remain compatible with the charging infrastructure) and to switch the generation mechanism (we already have a heterogeneous electricity generation system).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
That money comes from the taxes of people who don't want them.
I'm sorry, but you're not right, or at least wrong enough to draw a pretty distorted picture. Let an actual German native tell you:
You're right about about half the Autobahn network being limited below 130 km/h (81mph), you're right about the advisory speed of 130km/h, and the global speed average being around 140km/h.
BUT:
As soon as traffic is not congested you *will* see very high speeds on the Autobahn. 160km/h (100mph) is not considered high speed at all, it is considered a reasonable Autobahn cruise speed for all but subcompacts or vans. Most people with somewhat stronger car (i.e. about half the cars in Germany) will consider everything up to 200km/h (125mph) a pretty safe and reasonable speed, and will routinely go faster if needed. It is not unusual at all to see people in excess of 230km/h (143mph), although this will be considered pretty reckless by most.
These kind of speeds are everyday speeds that you do see anytime outside rush hour and areas very near cities with higher than usual traffic densities. The end result is that if you're cruising along at a smooth 140km/h (88mph), you will have very high speed differences up and down: you're passing trucks going maybe 80-90km/h (50-55mph), and are passed by Beemers going in excess of 210km/h (130mph) all the time. That's why the mandate to pass on the left lane only is a pretty big deal here - passing on the right is very unsafe.
Speaking as a German living abroad, this makes driving on the Autobahn a lot more fun (at least if you have the car for it), but at the same time a lot more stressful.
I haven't heard about rolling blackouts in California since the Enron days - and that was all a scam.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
Canadians don't hate you, and we have lots of oil, but our oil is more expensive (tar sands and offshore), so you don't have to pay people that hate you... just more to friends. We were in Afghanistan, helped in Libya, and we're in Iraq now... but Friendship/Alliances are not worth anything apparently. Heck you don't even pay us 'world price'... It would make it a lot easier if you would have approved keystone.
There isn't any additional net electricity. It takes more than 4 KWh to refine a gallon of gasoline. 4 is the lowest number you will hear. Some say 6, some say 8 if they add more elements in the chain than just refining. An average car will go further on the 4KWh than the gallon of gas. So the more electric cars we have the less electricity we will be using. best explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... http://www.autoblog.com/2011/1...
It's Tesla that has problems with doors and other parts falling of, not Mercedes and Audi.
My woman earns nearly twice what I do, I make nearly all the decisions. So mileage can vary in these situations :) Plus since I live in wonderful NJ, I could fuck the proverbial baby sitter, and end up with the house and alimony.
Well, there's (sometimes) a good reason you can't put unleaded gasoline in a leaded fuel only car. It could damage the valve seats.
However, the other way around, there's no *good* reason, there's just *a* reason. Leaded fuel in an unleaded vehicle will damage the catalytic converter. Otherwise, everything runs well.
At least here in NA, a less aggressive approach (ie: Waiting for the switch to complete to introduce catalytic converters) to the issue would have kept people from getting pissed off. Oh well... in the end we got a good result, so I suppose that's better than no result.
Google "gasoline equivalent in kwh". First result says one gallon of gasoline is equivalent to 33kwh. So you are off by a factor of 8. You are also wrong because the relevent number is how much energy is stored in a gallon of gas, not how much energy it takes to produce a gallon of gas.
Most electricity is generated from fossil fuels, so your argument about oil, tankers etc is moot. Also +30% of electricity is lost in transmission. Add 30+10+misc and you at the 50% efficiency of a combustion engine. So no, as the grid is currently implemented electric cars are not more efficient. There are proposals to make the grid more efficient, but naturally our government would rather build another F22.
My comment assumes numbers posted by others regarding efficiency, 50% for combustion engine, 90% for power plant. I think those numbers are optimistic at best, but I wanted to show that even using those numbers the energy balance does not favor electric cars. And I love electric cars.
Nope.
Subtract the 30% loss in the transmission of electricity. Now your equation is balanced.
ICEs are typically less than 20% efficient,
Not any more. The latest ICEs are more like 25%, with their direct injection and highly-refined turbocharging. That's a massive improvement! Problem is, they're still way behind electric, which can exceed 90% in both directions in ideal conditions.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Unless governments upgrade electric grids the efficiency of power plants is not the limiting factor. In the US the grid would have to triple in capacity to power our transportation needs. This at a time when the EPA is forcing numerous baseload coal plants to shutdown.
On the founders series of X, they have some issues. Appears to be all solved. And the fact that both MB and Tesla spend close to the same amount on warranty says a lot.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Electric cars are about twice as efficient in kWh terms compared to internal combustion engine cars, because most of the inefficiency losses take place at the power station before you buy the electricity. So we are now off by about a factor of 4.
Typical e-car needs somewhere between 25-35kWh of energy to drive 100km. (vs typical 5-7 litres of gasoline).
Typical German family consumes about 4000kWh annually.
Typical German drives about 10'000kms annually.
Basically, if peope switch to e-cars, houshold power consumption would at least double.
PS
Oh, and about solar panels.
a) energy is actually fed into the commen power grid, it's more profitable that way too, but regardless, due to taxes et all, one can't consume that energy himself)
b) more than half of Germany's electricity is produced using "old ways" (coil, nuclear plants)
Living in Germany, I need to tell you this: on a 3 lane highway with lengthy no speed limit part, driving 150-160km/h (100miles/h) I am normaly in the slowest lane, or in the second slowest (i.e. trucks on your way... they aren't allowed to drive on Sundays though).
On the third you can easily meet guys doing 200km/h+ and, trust me, seeing much faster car approaching you in rear view window is rather disturbing.
"[...to boost sluggish electric-car sales...]" Why are German electric cars sluggish?! (;-) (Just kidding, for those of you about to reply with the obvious correction!)
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
She has a Tesla? What do you drive?
I drive an old beat up minivan. She won't let me drive the Tesla, but sometimes she lets me sit in the passenger seat. Free advice: Don't marry a woman who earns more than you do.
Those women I prefer to date, not marry :-)
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Put regular gas in it and see what happens to those graphs. Then put the same fuel in the non-turbo V6. Notice the difference.
(Hint: Ford can't abstract away all the problems of a turbocharger)
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
you are a CHODE!
Driving on the autobahn is also much more organized than any american highway. Slow traffic in the right-most lane, mid-speed traffic in the middle, and passing in the left lane. NOBODY passes on the right & very rarely do you have somebody that noddles along in the middle lane instead of getting over to the right like they are supposed to.
Aargh! Let me correct that for you:
The default lane is the right lane.
If you want to overtake, you take the next lane available on the left.
This means that even on a three or four lane Autobahn, by default you drive in the rightmost lane.
The middle lane is NOT for "mid-speed traffic"!
Indeed, considering the two orders of magnutide between the number of cars produced anually by both.
Nonsense, daytime load under normal conditions is more than twice nighttime, and that doesn't even get into peak demand season.
Similarly, since 85% of the energy in gasoline is turned into heat, it isn't helping. At 15% efficiency that is typical of internal combustion engines, you are down to about 5 kwh actually used to move the car, versus an electric motor which is over 90% efficiency. If you add that ICE has no regenerative braking, no means of storing kinetic energy for re-use, you have a further disadvantage for ICE.
No, the point about tankers is not irrelevant. Moving petrol in fuel tankers to disperate petrol stations is hugely less efficient than putting LNG in a pipe to a power station.
Your estimates for efficiencies of technologies are also way off.
Typical grid transmission loss is actually about 10%. Petrol engine efficiency is *far* short of the 50% you quote (unless you're talking about the multi million dollar engines in a Formula 1 car). Road car engine efficiency is around 35%, while the mechanical transmission is typically about 90% efficient, getting you to 32% at most.
Gas power stations are typically about 45% efficient, combined with transmission, and battery efficiency and you get to about 37% - better than *just* the losses from the engine in a petrol car.
Add to that that in the western world we're already generating 30% of our energy from renewable sources, and that that's rising, and it's pretty much impossible to argue against EVs.
A Tesla uses around 360 wh/mi. That's 11 miles at the low end, and 22 miles with the 8 kwh/gallon number.
So say 16 miles... not exactly how far an average car goes on a gallon, but certainly nothing to sneeze at.
A Nissan leaf (300 wh/mi) using that high estimate would go 26.7 mi on the electricity used to refine a gallon of gas (although I suspect that 8 kwh is too high). That really is as far as an average car (light duty vehicles, short wheel base http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/si...) went in 2014... 23.2 mpg.
Canadians can't read the word "often."
It's one of those language differences like "colour"/"color", "humour"/"humor", and "eh"/"."
No, 50% and 90% are not "optimistic at best" if by that you mean "optimistic for EV loving people". 50% efficient petrol engines simply don't exist in road cars - not even close. 50% efficient engine and transmission combinations don't exist anywhere.