The 2nd Diesel Summit

Focus wrote up a piece noting another high-level German meeting on diesel cars to be held today.  This meeting?  It doesn't involve the car manufacturers....it's the city representatives on the intent of their plan to ban diesel cars in the near future.

For those not up on the agenda with the urban regions....there's an effort underway to use the court-system to ban cars....perhaps as early as January....if they are diesel-powered.  Buses and trucks?  Unaffected by the agenda.  All of this goes back to nitric oxide and the 'pollution-factor' in urbanized areas.

Part of this discussion will cover research done on hardware retrofits for the diesel cars and the likely outcome of this innovation.  The sad part of this story is that the retrofit idea only helped class 5 and 6....those cars made in the past seven years.  Anything earlier from that (class 1 to 4)....won't get any help from the retrofit.

The deal from the car companies for exchange deals....swapping in their older diesel cars and getting some special bonus?  It's not enticing owners to the degree expected.

So this talk really goes to the direction of discussing options, and if the diesel bans being discussed are absolutely going to occur.

One of the topics on the table....Citymaut.  It's something that hasn't been discussed much and revolves around the idea of the Autobahn-maut....where truckers pay to utizle the German autobahn system (German and non-German trucks).  Little is said about the idea but the basic idea is that you'd have a box on your car (likely a diesel-only but maybe to include all cars) and that when you enter an urbanized area.....you pay a fee (say 50-Euro-cents), and that it's deducted from your digital account.  The city or urban area would then collect 10 Euro a month (using my humble number) from each car-user.   Acceptance?  I would rate this as very low acceptance from the general public.  It'd just make people more hostile.

Another idea on the table is the goverment (federal) using state-funds to put up more public charging stations for electric cars.  Call it a free-gift agenda where money is just thrown at the environmentalists and city-law-suit folks.  Again, I don't think the general public will support that idea either.

One suggestion is to put up a massive state-by-state fund for what is qualified as contaminated regions (all urban of course), and that the cities could spend freely from this fund on projects to clean air.  Basically a bribe-deal.  The amount proposed to get people at the table?  250 million Euro.  My guess is that the environmentalists would want at least two or three billion a year....to get the free gift money involved.

Another topic which could be discussed is a box-like device which might help the older model diesels...costing less than 1,500 Euro.  In this case, there would likely be some combo deal where the government and manufacture folks would cover the total cost.  But the act of doing across Germany on millions of cars?  You can figure at least one year minimum

Presently, everyone is fixated on the legal system and the likely outcome that a ban will occur within 2018 (maybe not in January, but by the end of the year).

All of this.....is basically leading to a confrontation between three groups.

Group one.  The Berlin political folks (Merkel, the CDU and the likely partner from the election episode).  I would imagine that there is magic situation that can occur out of the coalition built from this election....where the Greens are the partner, and given two or three more ministries than normal....to entice a German-wide deal to back off the diesel ban.  It's stupid and crazy, I admit....but the Merkel team might find this the only acceptable way to get out of this.

Group two.  The environmentalists.  They have the upper hand on the legal system, and believe that the government will bend over backwards....paying out billions....to avoid the ban.

Group three.  The diesel car owners.  Sadly, they are stuck with products that are being manipulated with a political agenda.

Presently, one might go and suggest that it's time that diesel owners go and censure the cities involved....refusing to buy products from within the cities, and shut down commerce in zones that will ban diesel cars.  The fact that diesel owners are disorganized....makes this unlikely.

Amusingly enough.....this election ought to be solely over the future of diesel cars, but no one really wants to discuss how bad the situation is.