Germany

Germany’s electric vehicle market is lagging behind several neighboring countries and to change that, the government launched an incentive program 6 months ago to give a direct discount of €4,000 for all-electric cars and €3,000 for plug-in hybrids.

After receiving close to 2,000 applications within the first month, the rate slowed down significantly and now only 9,000 applications have been received since the start of the program. That’s disappointing since it’s for both all-electric and plug-in hybrids.
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When Germany introduced its new plan to boost electric vehicle adoption through new incentives, including a €4,000 discount at the purchase, Tesla claimed that they were purposely left out of the program because of a cap for vehicles with a starting price of less than 60,000 € negotiated by the government and the German auto industry.

Now Tesla managed to find a way to get access to the incentive through unbundling several features on its cars and significantly reducing the base price.
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After coming to the realization that they would need a mandate for all cars to be zero-emission by 2030 if they want to comply with the goals set by the Paris agreement to curb climate-warming emissions, Germany’s upper house of parliament gained approval for pushing a Europe-wide mandate to stop gas-powered car sales by 2030, according to German magazine Der Spiegel.
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As it was reported in the first few week of the new electric vehicle discount program in Germany, the scheme is spurring sales for BMW’s electric vehicle offering, mainly the BMW i3. We now have the statistics for the first full month of the program and it confirms the previous reports.
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Earlier this year, Germany announced its first electric vehicle incentive program to spur adoption of green vehicles in the country. Financed by both the state and the local auto industry, the program offers a €4,000 discount at the purchase of an all-electric vehicle and €3,000 for a plug-in hybrid.

The program is capped to electric vehicles with a starting price of less than €60,000, which prompt Tesla to respond and claim that it was purposely left out by the auto industry since its vehicles start at over €60,000. While the program is not helping Tesla, it is certainly helping BMW as reports are coming out claiming that sales of the BMW i3 are somewhat unsurprisingly significantly rising in Germany since the launch of the program earlier this month.
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It looks like Germany is about to become the first major country to set an official deadline for a ban on gas-powered cars. India recently confirmed that it is evaluating a scheme for all its fleet to be electric by 2030 and both the Dutch government and the Norwegian government are discussing the possibility to ban gas-powered car sales and only allow electric vehicle sales starting also by 2025.

But while the Netherlands and Norway are fighting over the technicalities, a senior government official in Germany confirmed they will impose a mandate for all new cars registered in the country to be emissions free by 2030.
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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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Earlier this week, we reported on German Chancellor Merkel planning to get directly involved in the negotiations with the auto industry over electric vehicle incentives though a meeting held yesterday. Apparently the meeting went fairly well since local media are already reporting that the two parties struck a deal albeit not as generous as previously expected.
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As we previously reported, the German government is currently in the final stages of establishing a new plan to boost the electric vehicle market in the country. The plan is rumored to include tax breaks for the development of EV technologies, investments in charging infrastructures and finally a much-anticipated €5,000 discount at the purchase of an electric vehicle.

The government is reportedly in negotiations with the German auto industry to figure out the financing of the initiative, but apparently the industry is only willing to pay for about a third of what the government is asking.
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Audi plans to release an all-electric luxury SUV, the e-tron quattro, in 2018. The vehicle is expected to become the first all-electric competitor to Tesla’s Model X. Earlier this year, we reported on one of the first Model X in Europe spotted near to Audi’s headquarters in Ingolstadt (pictures above), where the german automaker is believed to be reverse-engineering or benchmarking Tesla’s SUV – something it also did with the Model S.

Now a Model X reportedly driven by an Audi engineer has been spotted again over the weekend, but this time in a more interesting context.
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After a slow start in Germany for the past 3 years, Tesla is starting to make progress in this difficult market dominated by local manufacturers. Last year, Model S sales increased by 94% according to registration data, and although it still lags behind comparatively smaller countries like the Netherlands and Switzerland, things are looking up for Tesla in Germany.
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Daimler announced today an important €500 million ($543.5 million) investment in a new battery factory in Kamenz, Germany, through its ACCUmotive subsidiary. The company already has a relatively small battery plant at the location, but it purchased 20 hectares of land adjacent to the existing plant and plans to build a new factory to produce li-ion batteries for the electric vehicles of its Mercedes and Smart brands.

To be clear, two years ago, ACCUmotive invested about €100 million to expand the current plant, which now has 20,000 square meters (~215,000 sq-ft) of production aera, but this new investment is for an entirely new factory of 40,000 square meters (~430,500 sq-ft) of production space.
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The German ministries of economics, transport and environment reportedly agreed on a new incentive program for electric vehicles that will include a €5,000 discount at the purchase starting July 1st.
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Germany-based solar energy component supplier Memodo confirmed having received a large shipment of Tesla Powerwalls this week and that installations will start soon.

Memodo CEO Daniel Schmitt claims that his company is the first Tesla Energy distributor to receive the new home battery pack in Germany and he shared the picture seen below.
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Germany joined the International Zero-Emission Vehicle Alliance (ZEV Alliance) last month and committed to make all passenger vehicles emission-free by 2050. Today, Reuters reports what seems to be the government’s intention to make the first actionable move toward the ZEV Alliance’s goal.
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Germany is the thirteenth government to join the International Zero-Emission Vehicle Alliance, which aims at making all passenger vehicles emission-free by 2050. The group made the announcement Thursday at the UN global climate talks in Paris.

The governments now participating in the ZEV Alliance include the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and Norway in Europe; California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont in the United States; and Québec in Canada.
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Sonnenbatterie is the leader in home energy storage in Europe. The company is expected to represent a serious competitor to ‘Tesla Energy’ in Germany, which the automaker sees as an important market for energy storage due to the popularity of renewable energy in the country. Tesla’s head in Germany, as well as several managers, defected to Sonnenbattarie earlier this summer – hinting at a possible rivalry between the two companies.

At a press conference in Berlin today, Sonnenbatterie announced a new home battery pack, as well as a new solar panel/battery package and everyone want to know how it fares against Tesla’s Powerwall.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk described the Gigafactory in Nevada as a product, calling it the “Gigafactory 1” – implying there will eventually be a “Gigafactory 2”. This second battery factory could end up being built in Germany according to comments made earlier today by Vice-Chancellor and Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel.
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Based on registration data, Tesla delivered 121 Model S’s in Germany last month, which brings the year-to-date total to 1,212 cars versus 593 during the same period in 2014. 
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Earlier this year, Tesla’s head in Germany, Philipp Schroeder, left the company to join his former employer: Sonnenbatterie. Tesla quickly replaced Schroeder with its sales chief in Switzerland, but now we learn through Wirschafts Woche that 6 Tesla managers in the country followed Schroeder to the energy storage system maker.
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