In December, the federal government ended the environmental bonus for the purchase of electric cars over the weekend. For many buyers of a new car, this initially meant great uncertainty before the manufacturers stepped in and made up for the lost bonuses across the board.
After the abrupt end of the bonus, the Federal Environment Agency quickly came forward with a new proposal to breathe new life into state funding for the drive transition. President Dirk Messner told the “Editorial Network Germany”: “The Federal Environment Agency advocates a bonus-penalty system that is based on the polluter pays principle: the higher the CO₂ emissions of a car, the greater the tax burden should be.” It went on to say: “The fact is that the current funding of electric cars was in need of reform: We should focus more on people with low incomes and not distribute funding with a lump sum.”
So far, the new bonus is only to be understood as a suggestion – so there are no concrete figures or dates for any votes by the federal government on this reform initiative. But as “Auto Motor Sport” reports, manufacturer associations have also “long been calling for a successor model for e-car funding.”
Things actually look very good when it comes to the price development of new electric vehicles in Germany – and all without any government intervention.
Despite the end of the funding, some models have never been as cheap as they are today (you can find out more here). This is mainly because almost every manufacturer either partially or fully compensates for the lost premium or noticeably reduces prices with their own discount campaigns. Recently, the major Chinese company BYD also entered the bidding war and permanently reduced the list prices of its vehicles by up to 14.9 percent.
It is questionable whether there really is a need to replace government subsidies for the purchase of new cars – apparently the market regulates itself even without the inflow of public money. While an additional burden on combustion engine drivers could perhaps be considered as a possible source of money for a new edition of the premium, one should perhaps wait to see how prices develop without government intervention before introducing an additional tax.
There is no longer any funding in Sweden, Belgium or Great Britain. Mostly on the grounds that the acquisition costs would have equaled those of combustion models anyway. The introduction of smaller, already announced electric cars is likely to further drive this development forward.
Sources: RND, AMS
