Sunday, September 8, 2024

8 Sep 2024: Six German News Stories

 1.  Another stabbing, Karlsruhe train-station....Friday evening.  Standing on one of the platforms....32-year old guy got stabbed.  Culprit made it away.

2.  Up in the state of NRW (NW Germany).....a company was given the contract to shut-down a nuke plant (billions paid to them).  Well....company went bankrupt.  Dissolved now.

Gov't says they will have to step in and re-fund the shut-down themselves....at least a couple billion would have to be generated out of thin-air.

3.  This odd partnership between BMW and Toyota.....to build hydrogen-powered cars?  Well....it came out this past week, and might have serious implications, but it's a decade away.

Meanwhile,  I'll just say when the topic comes up with middle-class/working-class Germans, there's minimum enthusiasm for E-cars.  I'd say presently.....ONLY around one out of five Germans seem willing to go the E-car route.

Harsh reality of hydrogen cars?  Well.....in my circle of 20 miles around Wiesbaden....I know of ONLY ONE single fueling station (was made for hydrogen-buses originally).  

Even if you came up with a 40k Euro hydrogen vehicle....it'd take 15 years minimum to get stations set up and geared to fuel-up H-cars.  Course, the selling point is that you'd probably only require seven minutes to fuel up a H-car.  

4.  Hessen (the state) is saying now....a thinking process to help save VW is going on....to save jobs.  Wouldn't shock me if the state found half-a-billion to funnel into some zero-percent loan deal.

5.  Odd brawl....2:30 AM Saturday morning....two 'gangs' met up in the area of a Breitenbach am Herzberg (Hersfeld-Rotenburg) 'fair' (here in Hessen).

At least six folks arrested....one guy sent to a hospital. 

Yes, knives were involved.  Police still investigating.

6.  For a couple of hours Saturday...railway traffic was halted in central Germany....radio disruption was blamed.

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