Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Diesel Cars and the Future in Germany

If you follow the diesel business in Germany.....there are now around 28 German cities contemplating a ban on diesel cars entering their city. 

The effect on society?

It's typically around 50-percent of all German cars being diesel (at least by 2016 numbers)....that is often discussed.  On diesel sales today?  It's absolutely flat.  No one has any interest in buying the dead-end technology.

None of these 28 urbanized communities will stand and explain how people who reside in their cities....will commute to work....or those who reside an hour away and need to arrive into their city.  They have no desire to debate this part of the issue.

If you were to shift around and tell 150,000 drivers who need to enter Stuttgart to do their job that their vehicle is forbidden to enter....what happens next?  No one....not the media, not the cities, or even the journalists themselves....have contemplated the mess that this is creating.

Imagine having an urban transport system like Stuttgart, and having just six months to create some vast parking enterprise on the outskirts of town where 150,000-odd vehicles would have to navigate into....park....and hours later leave from.

Imagine the congestion into these urban 'targets', where some mythical S-Bahn or U-Bahn would transport an extra 14,000 'Johans' over a two-hour period (from 7 AM to 9 AM)....on TOP of the already filled trains now. 

Imagine the city having 25-percent of its work-force unable to show up at the right work time because of massive congestion and admitting six weeks into the 'damnation' of the diesel vehicle, that long-term....it might take five years for them to acquire enough train-cars to carry this number of passengers.

Imagine these diesel people refusing as well....to shop to any great extent within the twenty-eight zones.  They would avoid furniture purchases, Christmas shopping, and probably even avoid using medical facilities because of the transportation hassle involved.

All of this leaves me in some curious state of wondering if these determined anti-diesel folks contemplate the real 'big' picture of what they desire, or if they are off on some tangent without a moment of worrying over consequences.  If you dumped 25-percent of the typical shoppers in Frankfurt's shopping district....would they survive or would they just end up in two to three years dissolving a number of businesses because the urban mess this diesel solution triggered?

The big mess in Merkel's new coalition....if and when it arrives?  The SPD used to be known as the party that represented the working-class of Germany.  Now?  With the working-class and their diesel cars under threat?  One might suspect the SPD would just screw with them even more and make this a fairly miserable experience. 

I don't see 2018 or 2019 as being any real positive year for diesel owners.  Maybe Merkel and the brilliant genius group within this coalition will come to some decision to buy all the diesel cars....at blue-book value....and encourage a massive new car purchase period to make the diesel owners happy.  But that would require literally billions and billion of Euro, and make the environmentalists all upset about the pay-out deal arranged. 

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