Germany Plans $1.4 Billion In Incentives For Electric Cars (bloomberg.com) 155
An anonymous reader shares a Bloomberg article: German Chancellor Angela Merkel's government reached a deal with automakers to jointly spend 1.2 billion euros ($1.4 billion) on incentives to boost sluggish electric-car sales. Buyers will be able to receive as much as 4,000 euros in rebates to help offset the higher price of an electric vehicle, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said at a press conference in Berlin. Purchasers of hybrid cars will get as much as 3,000 euros off the price. The industry will shoulder 50 percent of the cost. The program is set to start in May, pending approval from the German parliament's budget committee, he said. "The goal is to move forward as quickly as possible on electric vehicles," Schaeuble told reporters, adding that the aim is to begin offering the incentives next month. "With this, we are giving an impetus."
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"You have to generate the power somewhere. If not in an internal combustion, then where?"
That *somewhere* is at power plants but lots of Germans have rooftop solar so perhaps self-generation will offset much of it.
We're also a long way from the time where EVs make up enough of cars on the road to be a significant draw on the grid, if well-managed.
California has about 200,000 plug-in EVs, roughly 1/2 the US total and they're not building power plants or suffering rolling blackouts because of demand.
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California has about 200,000 plug-in EVs, roughly 1/2 the US total and they're not building power plants or suffering rolling blackouts because of demand.
Most vehicle charging is done at night with baseload power. So rather than more power plants, we just better utilize the power plants that we already have. My wife has a Tesla, and it is programmed to start charging at 2am. We have demand billing, so we save money by using baseload power. A full charge (240 miles) costs us about $6.
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She has a Tesla? What do you drive?
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She has a Tesla? What do you drive?
I drive an old beat up minivan. She won't let me drive the Tesla, but sometimes she lets me sit in the passenger seat. Free advice: Don't marry a woman who earns more than you do.
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She has a Tesla? What do you drive?
I drive an old beat up minivan. She won't let me drive the Tesla, but sometimes she lets me sit in the passenger seat. Free advice: Don't marry a woman who earns more than you do.
Those women I prefer to date, not marry :-)
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California *is* suffering blackouts in summer and they are building their icky power plants in the neighboring states and Mexico.
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"California *is* suffering blackouts"
Is that so? I hadn't heard.
Sounds like it's more related to AC demand than pesky EVs.
The historic peak demand for the state fluctuates from year to year and 2014 was about the same as 2006 and only slightly higher than 2007
http://www.energyalmanac.ca.go... [ca.gov]
The data I've found doesn't show dramatic increases in state-wide electricity consumption over the past couple decades so even the most EV-friendly large jurisdiction in the world is not yet affected by the theoretical
This is still a problem in Cali? (Score:2)
I haven't heard about rolling blackouts in California since the Enron days - and that was all a scam.
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I haven't heard about rolling blackouts in California since the Enron days - and that was all a scam.
Yes, it is staggering that people still believe that shit, especially here. My x86 ASM instructor worked for Sunsweet doing automation. Part of his job was watching the data the power companies publish in realtime to see if there was going to be an outage, because if you lose power in the middle of a batch of fruit paste you have to scrub the whole batch, it hardens in the pipes and you have to steam them open, the whole thing is a nightmare. And guess what? California was never, ever above about 85% utiliz
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They are not scheduling them so there is no notice beforehand but they are still happening during peak usage.
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A Tesla uses around 360 wh/mi. That's 11 miles at the low end, and 22 miles with the 8 kwh/gallon number.
So say 16 miles... not exactly how far an average car goes on a gallon, but certainly nothing to sneeze at.
A Nissan leaf (300 wh/mi) using that high estimate would go 26.7 mi on the electricity used to refine a gallon of gas (although I suspect that 8 kwh is too high). That really is as far as an average car (light duty vehicles, short wheel base http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/si... [dot.gov]) went in 2014... 23.2 mp
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Electric cars are about twice as efficient in kWh terms compared to internal combustion engine cars, because most of the inefficiency losses take place at the power station before you buy the electricity. So we are now off by about a factor of 4.
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Similarly, since 85% of the energy in gasoline is turned into heat, it isn't helping. At 15% efficiency that is typical of internal combustion engines, you are down to about 5 kwh actually used to move the car, versus an electric motor which is over 90% efficiency. If you add that ICE has no regenerative bra
Actually, no, there is not enough electricity (Score:1)
Typical e-car needs somewhere between 25-35kWh of energy to drive 100km. (vs typical 5-7 litres of gasoline).
Typical German family consumes about 4000kWh annually.
Typical German drives about 10'000kms annually.
Basically, if peope switch to e-cars, houshold power consumption would at least double.
PS
Oh, and about solar panels.
a) energy is actually fed into the commen power grid, it's more profitable that way too, but regardless, due to taxes et all, one can't consume that energy himself)
b) more than half of G
Necessity is the mother of all invention (Score:2)
Someone will come up with something.
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Who said it wouldn't be from combustion? Even if you assume that this is all from combusting something, power station turbines, wires, substations, chargers and electric motors are still a much much much more efficient way of moving a vehicle than petrol tankers, engines, and mechanical transmissions.
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No, 50% and 90% are not "optimistic at best" if by that you mean "optimistic for EV loving people". 50% efficient petrol engines simply don't exist in road cars - not even close. 50% efficient engine and transmission combinations don't exist anywhere.
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Re:Where will the additional electricity come from (Score:4, Informative)
Internal combustion will never pass 50% efficiency. A power plant would be above 90%.
ICEs are typically less than 20% efficient, and some more is lost in the transmission system (which electric cars don't need). The best gas turbine power plants are less than 60% efficient, and will never get near 90%.
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You achieve much higher levels oaf efficiency with power stations, by associating industries that need heat for their processes. So you pipe waste heat to those places, reducing waste quite significantly. Similar can be done with desalination plants in the opposite direction, making them more efficient by using their waste water to for cooling, recovering energy lost in pumping. So immediate match associate power plants with desalination plants and they both become far more efficient.
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Re:Where will the additional electricity come from (Score:5, Informative)
So, rather than just being 2x more efficient baseline, electric vehicles are 3x as efficient?
That's about right. ICE+transmission delivers about 15% of fuel energy to the wheels. A gas turbine power plant + battery + charger delivers about 45%. So you get about three times the miles for a given amount of fuel. But gas/coal is much cheaper than gasoline, so the cost is much less than a third. Also, gas and coal are produced domestically, generating jobs for Americans. Petroleum is often from Iran/Venezuela/Russia or other people that hate us.
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Canadians can't read the word "often."
It's one of those language differences like "colour"/"color", "humour"/"humor", and "eh"/"."
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ICEs are typically less than 20% efficient,
Not any more. The latest ICEs are more like 25%, with their direct injection and highly-refined turbocharging. That's a massive improvement! Problem is, they're still way behind electric, which can exceed 90% in both directions in ideal conditions.
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And the battery myth has moved from myth to outright lie. You know they aren't that bad when it takes people lying about them to find anything bad to say about them.
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Yeah, they are a fad, like mobile phones, flatscreen TVs, solar panels and the internet.
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The key benefit of electric anything is decoupling the means of producing energy from the means of consuming energy. Power line and even battery efficiency are sufficiently high that you generally gain more than you lose by making the power generation remote (not to mention the local improvements in air quality - even if it were less efficient, moving the exhaust fumes out of built-up areas would be a win for humans).
If you remember the introduction of unleaded petrol, it was a long and painful switchov
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Germany gets 80% of its power from fossil fuel. It's more efficient to burn it at a plant than in a cylinder however.
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Nonsense, daytime load under normal conditions is more than twice nighttime, and that doesn't even get into peak demand season.
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How so? Do you think that EVs will merely sit in the passing lane?
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Re:That will slow down the autobahn (Score:5, Interesting)
The autobahn is just the German version of the USA's interstate system. Half of it has speed limits below 81 mph, and the other half has an "advisory limit" of about 81 mph. The sections with speed limits are dispersed, so it's not like you can go for very long before hitting one which slows all the traffic down. If you go over 81 mph in the areas with "advisory limits" only and you have an accident, you're automatically considered partially if not completely at fault. The fastest 6 lane free-flowing section of the autobahn averages about 88 mph. That's because it really isn't safe to drive most cars faster than that. The aerodynamics make it difficult, but a side-wind can push the broad side of the car hard enough to make steering against it quickly enough to counter-act the push very difficult as well. Imagine an 18-wheeler 3 feet to your left on a curved road as a strong wind blows you towards it while you're driving 90 mph. Most people that drive on the autobahn just want to get from A to B, not use it as a drag strip or you know... die because they were driving foolishly.
How would Teslas which have a max speed of about 130 mph make any difference? There are plenty of hybrids on the roads in Atlanta, GA -- and to see someone driving under 80 mph on the interstates near Atlanta is really rare. It's understood everyone goes at least 10 mph over the posted limit around Atlanta. The same goes for parts of Knoxville, TN. In those parts, the majority of Americans are driving the same if not faster than they would be on the Autobahn.
If anything, hybrids and electrics are an improvement -- especially over old POS cars like a 1950s or 1960s oldsmobile with a top speed of 97 mph that burns gas so fast, you'd think there was a hole in the tank. A 2002/2003 Ford Taurus with a top speed of 139 mph technically could beat a Tesla (after it catches up) in a long stretch, but it would burn through fuel and need a pit-stop before the Tesla... assuming it didn't fly off the road first as it becomes very hard to control over 90 mph since it lacks the aerodynamics of a Tesla.
I get that a lot of initial hybrid users stared at their dashboard trying to hypermile and that used to slow everyone to a crawl, but I think that fad is pretty much over -- especially now that hybrids are more mainstream and gas prices have plummeted.
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Driving on the autobahn is also much more organized than any american highway. Slow traffic in the right-most lane, mid-speed traffic in the middle, and passing in the left lane. NOBODY passes on the right & very rarely do you have somebody that noddles along in the middle lane instead of getting over to the right like they are supposed to.
Have an electric car & want to go a little slower so you can get decent range out of it? Simple, just stay in the right-most lane. Typical speed there is around 1
Advisory speed, eh? =) (Score:1)
Living in Germany, I need to tell you this: on a 3 lane highway with lengthy no speed limit part, driving 150-160km/h (100miles/h) I am normaly in the slowest lane, or in the second slowest (i.e. trucks on your way... they aren't allowed to drive on Sundays though).
On the third you can easily meet guys doing 200km/h+ and, trust me, seeing much faster car approaching you in rear view window is rather disturbing.
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Re: That will slow down the autobahn (Score:2)
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Well, the autobahn has a speed limit of 130km/h, and I think most electrics can reach that ...
Incentives for *German* electric cars (Score:2)
Interesting that while many other countries have had incentives in place for 5 yrs or more, Germany has waited until its domestic automakers got on board.
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I always found it funny that no body wants electric cars, you have to give them money to get them to buy them.
America just prints money so the cost dose not matter, no one cares about the national debt. But how do other countries that can't just print money give billions away? Funny that countries spend so much money on imaginary problems.
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What the fuck are you even attempting to say?
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Electric car incentives are because electric cars are currently significantly more expensive to manufacture. The incentives bring the cost to the buyer down closer to the price of a gas car.
Nobody says, "I really want a car that's louder, smellier, and helps fund Saudi Arabia!" They buy gas because it's cheaper. So far. Another 5-10 years and electric cars will get down to gas's price point, on top of being much cheaper to run. Reaching that point sooner is the point of electric car incentives.
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They buy gas because it's cheaper. So far.
And, in particular, they buy because the up-front costs are lower. The EU has made some fairly big wins by gradually pushing up the minimum efficiency of household appliances that you're allowed to sell. Most people don't think about the 5-year or even 2-year cost of ownership for an appliance that they're going to keep for 10 years, they look first and foremost at the sticker price. If the sticker price is 10-20% cheaper, a lot of people buy them even if they're going to have spent more in total by the
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Interesting that while many other countries have had incentives in place for 5 yrs or more, Germany has waited until its domestic automakers got on board.
The USA makes protectionist laws for the benefit of specific companies. Germany makes protectionist laws for the benefit of whole industries. Of course, who can get into the industries to begin with is tightly controlled through massive regulation.
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It's by far the largest industry in Germany with enormous lobbying power (both direct and indirect), of course they're going to do their best to accommodate the car manufacturers.
Forward Thinking! (Score:2)
Didn't Germany also commit to shutting down all their Nuke Power and not building anymore? Wonder were all that electricity will come from, only so many places in Germany for wind and hydro...
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Germany is plastered with wind plants all over.
2015 the percentage of renewables was 35%.
Germany has a "base load" of about 40% of peak. So at night you can basically load your car for free. Plenty of power.
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But, given the choice of using more Russian nat gas or doing coal, I think I would prefer the later.
Too bad Merkel screwed up with shutting down the nukes so quickly.
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Germany is not really expanding the use of coal (only 10 TWh more comparing 2015 to 2010 but it was at much higher levels previously - so clearly no new plants required) and it added much more renewables (+90 TWh) than it it removed nuclear (-50 TWh). And yes gas dropped too (-30 TWh) while production increased (+20 TWh).
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I believe that they have several more new ones that they are adding.
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Yes, they replace older and less efficient coal power plants that are decommissioned. Germany won't exit coal power any time soon because it is the only domestic source and relying on imports is dangerous.
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Nevertheless most of the hard coal (Steinkohle) we burn is imported.
http://bmwi.de/BMWi/Redaktion/... [bmwi.de]
It is in german but the first table shows the import countries and amounts.
The country names are hopefully self explaining. The first column per year "Kohle" is coal, the second "Koks Kohle" is treated coal for steel production.
Germany still keeps its own hard coal mines open, heavy subsidized, probably the most unprofitable coal mines of the planet.
We are digging right now about 1500 meters deep, the deepes
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I used to live in the Ruhr area for about 15 years, so yes, I know.
The subsidies are not only for securing a domestic fossil fuel source, but also for development of mining equipment that gets exported. I think coal will be only abandoned when the majority of electrical power generation will come from renewables, so maybe in 15-20 years, not earlier.
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A plant which goes online now has been planned at least a decade ago. And a lot of coal projects actually have been cancelled. So that some plants go online now does not imply that the use of coal is expanding. The new coal plants which will go online now will reduce the amount of CO2 from coal because they are more efficient. So you can put a completely different spin to this: http://reneweconomy.com.au/201... [reneweconomy.com.au] But to get an unbiased view I would recommend to look at actual numbers about electricity genera
Re: Forward Thinking! (Score:2)
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Nukes don't make sense in Germany. The land is settled very densely, the only domestic uranium sources were exhausted by the Soviets decades ago, there is still no permanent radioactive waste repository (Bavaria, the state with the most nuclear power plants, flatly refuses to deal with radioactive waste) and the temporary storage facilities are leaking, a fact that the operators have tried to hide. Nuclear power is also horribly expensive compared even to renewables. In fact, nuclear phase-out has been deci
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From 2010 to 2015, Germany did add 90 TWh per year from renewables while shutting down 50 TWh of nuclear. Nuclear is now less than 100 TWh per year. Where do you see a problem?
Re: Forward Thinking! (Score:2)
Noone will buy an electric car. Furthermore the subsidies only apply when the car industry is paying half of it. So nothing will happen.
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"Never understood government paying people to buy stuff"
You don't understand it because your premise is wrong. You're not being paid; you're getting a tax break.
There's a difference between the 2 but you probably don't understand that either.
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You don't get a tax break, you get a cut on the price by this.
If I buy an EV worth 35,000 EUR the government pays me back 4k. Cutting the price to 31,000 EUR.
EVs are tax free since ages.
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You don't understand it because your premise is wrong. You're not being paid; you're getting a tax break.
There's a difference between the 2 but you probably don't understand that either.
There is a difference, but it's not a good difference. You probably don't understand that, either, so here we go: the difference is that only people with money get a tax break, they aren't available to the poor.
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There is a difference, but it's not a good difference. You probably don't understand that, either, so here we go: the difference is that only people with money get a tax break, they aren't available to the poor.
You should be replying to the original AC; I understood that just fine, thanks.
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Whatever happened to selling a product people want to buy without government aid?
You mean like houses? Oil and gas? Agriculture? Pharmaceuticals?
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Never understood government paying people to buy stuff?
That's because you think of the government as some entity that has no relationship to the society that it governs. A demographic government is elected to represent the ideals of the population and has an income that is dependent on the overall health of the economy (you can't tax people who have no money). There are lots of ways of spending money that improve the overall health of the economy. The simplest example is building roads: if people can trade more cheaply with each other, the amount of wealth g
Trabants for you, exotics for the nomenklatura (Score:1)
Merkel is letting her mask slip, revealing herself as a traditional East German. Letting people have actual cars (as opposed to glorified golfcarts) is verboten unless one is a member of the nomenklatura.
This kind of stuff belongs to the GDR era, not the modern day.
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Pretty much everyone who's tried a Tesla Model S prefers it to gas powered cars. That's why marques such as Ferrari and BMW are at the very least having to produce hybrids, if not EVs themselves. A few more years and a gas-powerd car will seem as attractive as monochrome TV.
These programs are stupid (Score:2)
Make electric cars cheaper without sacrificing so much range so they have parity with gas powered cars. Then take all the money you would have put in to incentives and create infrastructure. Stop paying people to buy in to technology and start making the technology desirable to have.
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Make electric cars cheaper without sacrificing so much range so they have parity with gas powered cars. Then take all the money you would have put in to incentives and create infrastructure. Stop paying people to buy in to technology and start making the technology desirable to have.
Pay attention, Slashdotters. Elon Musk is in da house!
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Elon isn't doing this. He's making cars the majority of people can't afford. Electric cars need a 300 mile range for $25k new with the infrastructure to back it up or adoption will never be as good as we'd like it to be.
It's OK to have luxury electrics, but if they make up the entire market it will never take off.
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"He's making cars the majority of people can't afford. Electric cars need a 300 mile range for $25k new with the infrastructure to back it up"
Dude, wtf universe are you viewing? If by "the majority of people" you're counting every human being, then you're correct BUT they can't afford your fantasy $25k 300 mile EV either. Why do you think most of Asia - where "the majority of people" live - gets around by bicycle & scooter??
But 400,000 people, most of whom can't afford any of Tesla's current lineup did
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Technology always starts out expensive, and gradually comes down in price with innovations, improved yield and scale. And as it comes down in price, more people get on-board. Tesla demonstrates that perfectly as the cost of subsequent models has reduced.
There is no magic threshold of specs above which EVs will "take off". They are already taking off. The pace will just increase as they get better value.
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Dumbasses keep saying this, but the facts speak for themselves. Most people aren't going out of their way for an electric that only gets 75 miles, and if they do, it's in addition to a gas powered car not instead of it.
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Where are you getting 75 miles from? The world's best selling EV is the Tesla Model S with about 250 miles range. The second is the very affordable Nissan Leaf which comes with 84 mile and 107 mile versions.
The Nissan Leaf with 75 miles range was the 2013 model. Each year EVs get better - even the existing models.
Naysaying EVs is like the people saying the iPod wouldn't catch on. It's inevitable. And the only thing that can stop it is some even better technology. The one thing that won't happen is staying w
Re: These programs are stupid (Score:2)
At present the Nissan Leaf that is sold in the UK has a range of 150 miles per charge in normal conditions, reduced to about half for winter weather. The difference between 150 and 300 mile base range can be seen as a good target for reliably using the car all year round even for someone commuting a few more miles than average Joe.
I wonder (Score:2)
I wonder how much of that money is coming from VW?
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Horrible idea (Score:2)
And then on the batteries, give them based on the battery size. The bigger the battery, the more subsidy they should have. The reason is that EVs charging at nighttime will help balance the electrical demand/grid.
This program won't be very successful (Score:2)
Here in Germany, the main issue why people do not buy electric cars is not that they are slightly more expensive than standard cars (talking about stuff like the e-Golf, not Tesla), it is that the infrastructure is not there and so electric cars are not practical. People look at electric cars and ask "where am I supposed to charge that?". Many people park their car on the streets, so they simply cannot charge it over night, or they have a garage with no suitable power outlet, so that the incentives would ha
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"4000 Euros in incentives won't magically make a power outlet appear on the street where you park your car over night."
Meanwhile, at your Western neighbors (Netherlands), charging poles are popping up all over the cities. Buy an electric car and in many places they will put a charging pole for two cars, with dedicated charging-only parking space next to it, right in your street. They pay for themselves, partially, because the kWh price is a bit higher than what you'd pay at home (I think 0.05 EUR on top of
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So all these incentives will do is make rich people (who can afford it anyway) save 4000 Euros when they buy a Tesla or i8 as a 2nd or 3rd car.
I am an American who has lived in Germany for about 25% of his life. This is exactly a give away to the well-to-do elite class before an election in 2017. A Tesla costs double to three times the average annual wages. An E-Golf costs about the average annual wage. Note that >50% workers fall far under the average. I estimate that less than 10% of the population could afford an electro-auto with or without the rebate. This program will only further increase resentment among the 1/3 of the population who pa
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Slow cars?! (Score:1)
Ford has that with their current day Mustang II (Score:2)
Just get the I4+Turbo and you'll get a fake V6 sound. Not perfect, but that's what's here today.
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I'll rather just keep it in the garage without engine and just sit in it and imagine i'm cruising down route 66, than put a straight 4 in there. Sorry, but it's either V8 or electric. No V6, no I4, no V10, and no turboes.
You know Ford's four-banger turbo has more power and torque than the V8 they used in the prior generation, right? And it has a broader torque curve, because turbos are awesome for torque? Just checking...
Not with regular unleaded it doesn't... (Score:2)
Put regular gas in it and see what happens to those graphs. Then put the same fuel in the non-turbo V6. Notice the difference.
(Hint: Ford can't abstract away all the problems of a turbocharger)
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I know the I4 turbo Mustang has more horse power than the V6, but more torque and power than the V8?
Than the old NA V8. Actually, I think it might have a whisker less TQ, and a whisker more HP, but I could have that backwards. Also, if you tune it, yowza. You could get a bit more out of the old V8 by tuning, but not that much.
The new V8, obviously, has more than the ecoboost 4. But it also weighs more...
I, personally, would hold out for an Aluminum 'stang. That should actually be awesome.
Re: Scooters? Come on... (Score:1)
For any journey where an electric bike is practical, it is already vastly cheaper than the alternatives. Three years ago I bought one to commute to work 7 months a year. I went crazy an bought one that cost about twice the price of the cheapest ones, and I even then it only took me two summers to save more money on bus passes I did not have to buy. If you live in a place where the bus passes are less heavily subsidized you will have an even better return on your investment, and if it's a car you're replacin
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Why does every car need to have a 900km (550mile) range? In the US, most people drive less than 50 miles round-trip to work. Most households have 2 or more cars. Why can we not replace at least one car in those households with an electric car that gets 100 miles per charge? That easily covers the daily commute and typical errands, even if you can't charge it while at work.
That may work out in the US, but in many places there is not enough space for every household to have several cars. If you have space for one car, you need it to fill every role, including holidays and the occasional long-distance trip. Affordable electric cars cannot fulfil that role yet.
I don't know why a $29k Nissan leaf (before any incentives) or a $42k BMW i3 would be considered for the 'super wealthy' when the average new car price is $32k, unless you consider the average new car buyer 'super wealthy'.
Most people who own a car bought it second-hand. The average person does not have €20k+ lying around to spend on a new car.
Why do batteries need to be guaranteed for 12-16 years? No new ICE car has a warranty that long.
It is probably a trust issue. People are familiar with the maintenance and risks involving an