The Electric Car Story

There is a piece (short in nature) by ARD (Channel One, in Germany) today....over this idea of forcing the public to accept more electric cars.

The suggestion?  The German Environmental Council wants a quota on electric cars......25-percent.

Deadline for this number establishment?  2025 (seven years from now).

Their quote is: "Electromobility is highly efficient and ready for the market, we now have to move quickly." All of this would lead to positive CO2 numbers.

The problem with a quota?  Well....how would you actually force people into this trend?

People shake their heads presently over the lack of chargers.  You can travel over the country and there are various digital maps existing to lead you to a charger station, where you would sit for two or three hours and recharge your car.  If the nation did reach the 25-percent point by 2025....would there be enough chargers out there?  My guess is that you'd have to have a massive installation program to make this work.....which isn't existing presently.

Would the power grid be able to accept this?  No one has really done enough analysis to say where the grid is presently and if 10-percent, 20-percent or 30-percent growth occurred....would the grid deliver?  Presently the plan to shut down the nuke power plants remain....with coal-fired plants behind them.  I admit massive growth in wind-power, but there is a question-mark existing here.

Then you get to the pricing scheme.  Most Germans look at the car-show demonstrations and eyeball the price-tag of the electric cars shown.  Most are in a hefty range.  The E-Go car?  Down into the 15,000 Euro range, but it's a car designed for two people max, with a charging time going into five to six hours.  Germans research heavily and the draw to the electric car business is not there yet.

How would the quota be achieved?  My guess is that the political folks would wander into this mess and decide to tax the heck out of diesel and gas at the pumps.  This would help to pay for affordable housing or some social benefit cause.  The public reaction?  Mostly angry and shaking their heads.

Along this route, I see this one single problem existing down the road in twenty years.  Let's say that fifty-percent of society by 2037 had electric cars, and the bulk went to installing solar power collectors onto their house, and nightly charging their car with their own juice.....all this taxation money from gas/diesel sales for seventy-odd years?  It'd bring you to a moment where people weren't charging from the grid (where you'd get tax money).  Where exactly would you find all this tax situations to overcome this shortfall?  Oh......new taxation schemes?  Yes. 

These folks may get their 25-percent but I would question how exactly it'll be achieved and if it's a positive thing.