The German government subsidized almost 2.2 million electric vehicles and paid about 10.2 billion euros for them. This is shown by the report published on the website of the Ministry of Economy by Minister Robert Habek (Greens) on the effect of the Financing Program that was introduced in 2016 and was abruptly terminated in December 2023.
Due to the current weak sales of electric cars, the leading party in the SPD coalition, the Federal Council and several manufacturers such as Volkswagen or Opel are calling for the return of subsidies, writes The mirror.
Subsidies were canceled last year due to lack of funds in the budget. Even then, the Ministry of Economy estimated the total costs for the state at around ten billion euros. The evaluation, commissioned by the Ministry of Economy and prepared by the Karlsruhe Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research and the consulting firm Technopolis, does not deny this success, but contextualizes it.
Of the subsidized cars, 1.4 million are exclusively battery powered, 475 are hydrogen fuel cell powered, the rest are plug-in hybrids with an additional internal combustion engine. Subsidized vehicles will reduce climate-damaging CO2 emissions in German traffic by 44 million tons during 15 years of use. However, the benefit to the climate is lower than originally expected and cannot be fully attributed to the subsidies, he says HAK magazine.
This is mainly due to the so-called take-away effect: surveys have shown that between a third and a half of subsidy beneficiaries would buy electric cars even without the government subsidy. After all, this effect is smaller with the German purchase premium than with similar subsidies compared to other countries. The cost of the state budget per ton of avoided CO2 was 318.52 euros. For comparison, emission credits are currently traded for around EUR 65 per ton on the European CO2 exchange for energy and industry. The financing triggered investments of almost 49.5 billion euros, but hardly improved the competitive position of the German car industry.
The report also determined the social structure of premium recipients, whether they are private buyers or users of official cars. Even 71 percent were men, which is at the level of the entire new car market. But at the same time, the authors observed a clear inequality in favor of people with above-average incomes. About 30 percent lived in households with more than 6,000 euros net per month. Only a fifth of subsidy beneficiaries lived in multi-apartment buildings. The East German federal states participated less in the subsidy program.
Izvor: Revijahak.hr / The Mirror
Photo: Autoblog.rs archive / Opel
Source: autoblog.rs
