Germany may force automakers to go almost all-green by 2030
Germany wants to boost electric vehicle and hybrid adoption beyond its current – admittedly minuscule – levels in order to reduce emissions while cutting the country’s dependence on foreign oil, as Germany spends more than $55 billion a year on oil imports. Currently, Germany is home to 25,000 EVs and 130,000 hybrids, compared to 30 million gas-powered cars and almost 15 million diesel-powered vehicles, Bloomberg says, citing the KBA vehicle registration authority. Electric vehicles are forecast by the Center of Automotive Management institute to increase to 8 percent of new-vehicle sales by 2025 from 0.6 percent now, while the current government-funded cash perks for could spur sales of 500,000 green vehicles by the end of the decade.
In 2009, Merkel set a goal for Germany to have 1 million electric vehicles on the country’s roads by 2020, and as many as 6 million by 2030. From our vantage point in 2016, the country’s green-vehicle sales trends suggest that Germany will fall well short of those figures. As a result, the German government hatched a plug-in vehicle incentive plan this spring that would fund $1.4 billion in perks for people who buy plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles, with about half of the funding coming from German automakers.
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