Germany’s Minister of Economic Affairs Peter Altmaier is apparently not satisfied with the electrification effort of German automakers. He reportedly asked the top brass of Germany’s auto industry ‘When will you build an electric car that is only half as sexy as a Tesla?’
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A few weeks ago, Germany officially announced a new incentive and investment program to accelerate the adoption of electric cars in the country. The most important incentive is a €4,000 discount at the purchase of an electric vehicle, but it is capped to vehicles with a starting price of less than €60,000.
Fast-forward to this week, Tesla is now claiming that the government and German automakers purposely included this base price restriction to exclude Tesla from the program. In its official response on its German website, Tesla writes:
“[the plan] was drawn up jointly with the Chairman of the German automobile manufacturers and the relevant ministries.
Unfortunately, it was decided that Model S and Model X customers wouldn’t benefit from this promotion, because what they call ‘premium’ is linked to an arbitrary price limit. This part of the program is obviously directed against Tesla.”
Tesla is right about the EV plan having been negotiated with German auto industry. Even German Chancellor Merkel was directly involved in the negotiations with executives from BMW, Mercedes-maker Daimler and Volkswagen.
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