When 2030 rolls around in Germany, a law is currently on the books to forbid sales of any new gas or diesel car....meaning you have to buy battery-powered or perhaps hydrogen-powered (if the technology ever takes off). We are basically twelve years away from this significant date.
There's almost no discussion over this law....the impact....the anticipated public reaction as we start to get a couple of years away, or the potential failure. So I'm going to make a couple of observations:
1. Virtually all of the German car manufacturers have at least one model in the electric game, and most will suggest in news statements that they've got several models under review to drag along to the battery-powered situation. My best guess is that both BMW and VW will have at least five models each ready to sell by 2023 (five years into the future).
2. Just because they offer it....will Germans buy them? This is something of an unknown. At the end of 2017, with just 'pure' battery cars (not hybrids), there were approximately 75,000 cars registered on the streets of the country. The big push in 2017? Twenty-five thousand were registered in that one year, and I might expect 2018's numbers to between 30,000 and 40,000 registered. Total number of private cars owned in Germany? 45.8-million (Jan 2017 stats).
To even reach the 1-percent point of ownership? You can do the math and estimations, but you can figure it won't happen before 2022.
3. What really hinders the German attraction to the vehicles? First, while it might make sense in an urbanized environment like Essen, Stuttgart, or Berlin....in smaller rural communities, the limitations of the car are readily apparent. Second, even in urbanized neighborhoods.....a lot of Germans don't have their dedicated garage or parking spot.....so how you charge up such a vehicle overnight? Third, this retirement process of the batteries every five to seven years....what's the real cost factor? Germans tend to analyze things like this and if you suggest 2,000 Euro to buy new batteries and pay disposal costs for the old ones....that's a no-go for working-class Germans. Fourth, as you peel back German concerns.....some folks are asking when gas/diesel tax revenues start to drop....won't they have to up electrical tax revenues? Well....no one answers that question. Some Germans will suggest that a massive solar panel scheme will occur around 2030, with everyone trying to generate their own power and avoid the public grid and the taxation situation.
4. Will German companies start to decrease car models in the gas/diesel categories by 2025, and try to 'encourage' you to get closer to their battery-car models? I might go and suggest this will be a national car company policy, but if the public isn't buying a million battery-cars per year by 2028 (ten years away), then this whole situation is kinda doomed as you arrive in 2030.
5. The odds of a lot of Germans buying new gas powered cars in exceptional numbers in 2028 and 2029? I think whatever models are still manufactured in this period.....will be selling at all-time levels and just about everyone trying to get a gas model as their 'last car'.
6. Public discontent by 2030 as the 'future unfolds'? This is a moment where you can sip through a beer or two, and imagine the landscape. Will half of the nation be attempting to dismantle the law, and half the nation be standing on a Green Party pledge to stay the course? It's entirely possible. So the question comes up.....were the political folks just ahead of the power-curve in forcing this transformation? This will be debated to a great degree. Will car companies be so attached to the new technology and their sales strategy.....that they can't offer a gas-engine car in 2030, and foreign competition (I hate to suggest it....but Chevy or Lada) arrives to offer gas options?
7. Finally, the battery funnel. On numbers, you can sense an enormous manufacturing 'creature' needing to exist in a decade, making car batteries day and night....to catch up with demand, and to replace retired car batteries. Could you wake up and find yourself in need of a new battery (say with your 2026 car in the year 2032), and the dealer just grins and says sure, but we have a four-month waiting period on new batteries.
I don't necessarily want to be negative on this transformation date, but the mandated side of this discussion leads onto consequences, and most Germans are likely to study this discussion in a more complete way as we get closer.
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