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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."
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
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
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.
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*
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?
"Never understood government paying people to buy stuff"
You don't understand it because your premise is wrong. You're not being paid; you're getting a tax break.
There's a difference between the 2 but you probably don't understand that either.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
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.
You don't get a tax break, you get a cut on the price by this.
If I buy an EV worth 35,000 EUR the government pays me back 4k. Cutting the price to 31,000 EUR.
EVs are tax free since ages.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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.
Whatever happened to selling a product people want to buy without government aid?
You mean like houses? Oil and gas? Agriculture? Pharmaceuticals?
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
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.
Germany gets 80% of its power from fossil fuel. It's more efficient to burn it at a plant than in a cylinder however.
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.
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)
For any journey where an electric bike is practical, it is already vastly cheaper than the alternatives. Three years ago I bought one to commute to work 7 months a year. I went crazy an bought one that cost about twice the price of the cheapest ones, and I even then it only took me two summers to save more money on bus passes I did not have to buy. If you live in a place where the bus passes are less heavily subsidized you will have an even better return on your investment, and if it's a car you're replacing it's better still.
So no, subsidies on the sales of these bikes is not what's needed to make them more popular. Where I live, this is what is needed:
1. More cops on the road, revoking licenses of drivers who try to kill bikers.
2. Competent traffic planners who don't spend their working day trying to kill or slow down bikers.
Well, the autobahn has a speed limit of 130km/h, and I think most electrics can reach that ...
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
Never understood government paying people to buy stuff?
That's because you think of the government as some entity that has no relationship to the society that it governs. A demographic government is elected to represent the ideals of the population and has an income that is dependent on the overall health of the economy (you can't tax people who have no money). There are lots of ways of spending money that improve the overall health of the economy. The simplest example is building roads: if people can trade more cheaply with each other, the amount of wealth generation increases.
Often particular products have, to use a metaphor from chemistry, a high activation energy and can benefit from the government acting as a catalyst. At the initial cost of production, no one will buy it. If demand becomes high enough, then economies of scale in manufacturing will kick in (often high enough up the supply chain that all manufacturers will benefit) and the price will drop enough that they become attractive to a lot more people. By subsidising the initial price, the government increases the total sales and receives revenue in the form of sales taxes on all of the goods that wouldn't ever have come to market (or would have years later) without the subsidy. Additionally, by providing a local demand, they encourage suppliers to set up locally. These companies then have first-mover advantage and will eventually shift to exporting a lot of their product once the local demand has allowed them to scale up to the size where they have a lot of production capacity and low costs. This, again, increases tax revenue through corporation taxes and through income taxes on the employees.
No wonder governments are broke.
I'm guessing that you're one of the people that voted in favour of 'austerity' and are now completely ignoring the fact that countries that did this are the last ones coming out of recession.
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.
Why would it? There's already a thriving market in electricity generation. Increasing the demand just makes it more attractive to existing players (and, potentially, new players) in that market to increase their capacity.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Pretty much everyone who's tried a Tesla Model S prefers it to gas powered cars. That's why marques such as Ferrari and BMW are at the very least having to produce hybrids, if not EVs themselves. A few more years and a gas-powerd car will seem as attractive as monochrome TV.
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...
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.'"
You don't understand it because your premise is wrong. You're not being paid; you're getting a tax break.
There's a difference between the 2 but you probably don't understand that either.
There is a difference, but it's not a good difference. You probably don't understand that, either, so here we go: the difference is that only people with money get a tax break, they aren't available to the poor.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
Why does every car need to have a 900km (550mile) range? In the US, most people drive less than 50 miles round-trip to work. Most households have 2 or more cars. Why can we not replace at least one car in those households with an electric car that gets 100 miles per charge? That easily covers the daily commute and typical errands, even if you can't charge it while at work. (my employer currently has 4 out of 1000 spaces with electric charging capability, and it's easy to add more) You can use the second ICE car for family trips that require longer distances.
I don't know why a $29k Nissan leaf (before any incentives) or a $42k BMW i3 would be considered for the 'super wealthy' when the average new car price is $32k, unless you consider the average new car buyer 'super wealthy'. Sure, you can point to the Tesla S and BMW i8 as examples of the technology that are only accessible to the wealthy, but that one end of the market.
Why do batteries need to be guaranteed for 12-16 years? No new ICE car has a warranty that long. People pay thousands to replace transmissions on cars half as old. The current retail price for a replacement battery pack for a Chevy Volt is about $3500, although failure rates for the actual batteries even to 120k miles is very low. It's usually the control circuitry, which costs much less to replace.
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.
Why does every car need to have a 900km (550mile) range? In the US, most people drive less than 50 miles round-trip to work. Most households have 2 or more cars. Why can we not replace at least one car in those households with an electric car that gets 100 miles per charge? That easily covers the daily commute and typical errands, even if you can't charge it while at work.
That may work out in the US, but in many places there is not enough space for every household to have several cars. If you have space for one car, you need it to fill every role, including holidays and the occasional long-distance trip. Affordable electric cars cannot fulfil that role yet.
I don't know why a $29k Nissan leaf (before any incentives) or a $42k BMW i3 would be considered for the 'super wealthy' when the average new car price is $32k, unless you consider the average new car buyer 'super wealthy'.
Most people who own a car bought it second-hand. The average person does not have €20k+ lying around to spend on a new car.
Why do batteries need to be guaranteed for 12-16 years? No new ICE car has a warranty that long.
It is probably a trust issue. People are familiar with the maintenance and risks involving an ICE car. Electric cars are less familiar and batteries wearing down is a problem they know exists, but generally don't have experience with. That makes people cautious.
There is a difference, but it's not a good difference. You probably don't understand that, either, so here we go: the difference is that only people with money get a tax break, they aren't available to the poor.
You should be replying to the original AC; I understood that just fine, thanks.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
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.
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.
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.