Saturday, January 9, 2016

Gas and Diesel Car Production Story

I noticed in German car news today....from Focus....that the German Green Party has a new platform that they are working on.

The Greens want to eliminate all manufacture of gas and diesel cars in Germany by 2036 (twenty years from now).

If you were a German car company....you'd only manufacture battery-powered cars.

Logically, you'd sit back and pause over this, and ponder upon the suggested idea and the impact.

It's not to say that gas or diesel cars would disappear by 2036, it's to say that all new cars produced after that point would not be gas or diesel.

Battery-production?  There's a lot of toxic stuff within the battery-production business.  If someone were to come around to my community talking up the construction of a battery factory.....I'd be against the idea.  Most Germans would be fairly negative and it'd be awful hard within Germany to convince people to accept one major factory.  Oh, they'd accept it if it were in Czech or Poland, or perhaps Russia.....but it'd be tough to sell this to the average German.

A remarkable end for gas stations?  There would still be a large segment of society driving gas and diesel cars for at least twenty more years.  But you'd eventually start to note the forty-odd gas stations within a thirty-minute drive of your house....disappearing.  I'd take a guess by 2050 (fourteen years after the Green rule fell into place)....that I'd probably only have five or six gas stations existing.

A national crisis if the electrical grid went down?  That's a curious point.  If you could disrupt the power grid for twenty-four hours.....people would be unable to travel or recharge their battery-powered cars.

The motorcycle situation?  That's a curious thing.  There are some mopeds existing which utilize batteries.....but this is a short-distance episode of thirty to forty minutes of power.  I just don't see gas powered motorcycles being eliminated.....ever.

The idea of acceptance by the German public?  Roughly ten-percent of the German society today is fairly attached to the Green political machine and culture.  An additional ten-percent of society leans that way on a number of topics.  But convincing more than two-thirds of German society to agree to the end of gas/diesel car production?  I just don't see that happening.

What will end up at some point (probably ten to fifteen years in the future)....is some coalition government where the Greens will be a partner in running some German government.  As part of the coalition agreement....this end of gas/diesel car production will be on the table.  Someone....maybe the CDU, or the SPD.....will be forced to accept this, to get the Greens as a coalition partner.  Germans will stand there in shock that such difficult matter was so easily accepted.

Change is coming.....whether people like it or not.

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