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Transportation China

Germany's EV Subsidies Will Include Chinese Brands (cnevpost.com) 55

Posted by BeauHD from the global-competition dept.
Germany is reinstating EV subsidies after a sharp sales drop, rolling out a 3 billion-euro program offering 1,500-6,000 euros per buyer starting in May and running through 2029. Unlike some neighboring countries, the incentives are open to all manufacturers with a focus on low- and middle-income households. From a report: "I cannot see any evidence of this postulated major influx of Chinese car manufacturers in Germany, either in the figures or on the roads -- and that is why we are facing up to the competition and not imposing any restrictions," German Environment Minister Carsten Schneider said at a Monday press conference. The decision is a major boon for affordable Chinese automakers like BYD that are steadily gaining ground in the European market, [Bloomberg noted].

Germany's green-light for Chinese EVs stands in stark contrast to other nations' approaches. In the UK, subsidies introduced last year effectively excluded Chinese battery-powered vehicles, while France's so-called social leasing scheme includes similar restrictions. [...] Germany maintains strong diplomatic ties with China. German automakers are among the most significant players in China's automotive industry. Over the past years, China's policies -- including purchase subsidies and purchase tax reductions -- have not excluded models or automakers from specific countries. Whether German automakers like Volkswagen or American automakers like Tesla, all enjoy national-level purchase incentive policies in China on par with domestic automakers.
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Germany's EV Subsidies Will Include Chinese Brands

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  • Germany better put some extra money aside to beef up their fire brigades if they let Chinesium into the mix.

    • read TFS:

      "I cannot see any evidence of this postulated major influx of Chinese car manufacturers in Germany, either in the figures or on the roads" German Environment Minister Carsten Schneider said at a Monday press conference.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Sique ( 173459 )
      There is already good data available for the average number of car fires for EVs, and the result is: EVs don't burn. They are more than 25 times as fire resistant as internal combustion powered cars, and 35 times as fire resistant as hybrids. Additionally, there has been extensive testing how to handle an EV fire, and it's quite easy: Keep the temperature of the burning part below 80 degree Celsius or 175 F, and you are fine.

      Don't repeat what you have heard somewhere, look into an actual fire fighter manu

      • They are more than 25 times as fire resistant as internal combustion powered cars, and 35 times as fire resistant as hybrids.

        Are they made of asbestos or something?

        Or perhaps you mean the frequency of them having fire accidents is that much lower?

        • Re:Fire! Fire! (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Sique ( 173459 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2026 @04:58AM (#65936574) Homepage
          ... Which is basically the same. EVs don't have much things built in that can burn easily, other than internal combustion engines, which have a lot of fuel on board. Without the fuel adding to the fire, cars would not burn that easily. Electricity on board is a fire hazard, yes, as can be seen with hybrids, which have an even higher risk of fires, because having high voltage lines parallel to fuel lines might not be a good idea.

          • It isn't, but nevermind.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            LFP batteries are very hard to ignite anyway. There are videos of people trying, like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

            In the end they attack it with power tools, and it still doesn't catch fire. The plastic case does, but the battery itself doesn't.

            • Roughly half of EVs still have NCMs. We should have long since banned NCMs, especially large ones, but arguably all of them.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by shilly ( 142940 )

                Tiresome stupid bullshit. NCMs still catch fire much less frequently than ICE vehicles, and I'll bet you typed your demand to ban NCMs on a device powered by an NCM. If we're banning things because they're too quick to burn, ban fucking ICE vehicles first.

                • Tiresome stupid bullshit.

                  99% of what you write? Agreed.

                  NCMs still catch fire much less frequently than ICE vehicles

                  As if that were the only thing that mattered. Fuck off with your stupid shallow clown shit.

                  and I'll bet you typed your demand to ban NCMs on a device powered by an NCM

                  Wrong. As my prize, can I have you fuck off? You didn't post for a few days there and it was great.

                  If we're banning things because they're too quick to burn, ban fucking ICE vehicles first.

                  Oh yeah, just throw the economic system into chaos by banning the technology we depend on right now, great fucking plan. What a spectacular genius you are.

                  Just in case anyone with a brain is reading this thread for some reason: NCMs aren't bad only because they are more likely to combust tha

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by shilly ( 142940 )

                    Jesus fuck, was this really your response? This is what you consider an effective rejoinder?

                    *Obviously*, NCM fires are harder to put out than LFP fires, but they are so rare it that the overall risk is much lower than for ICE. Risk = frequency times severity. This is extremely well rehearsed by now. You know it. I know it. The dogs in the street know it.

                    Also, if your device isn't running on an NCM battery, it will be a lithium cobalt oxide or a lithium polymer battery, both of which have a *higher fire risk

      • There is already good data available for the average number of car fires for EVs, and the result is: EVs don't burn. They are more than 25 times as fire resistant as internal combustion powered cars, and 35 times as fire resistant as hybrids. Additionally, there has been extensive testing how to handle an EV fire, and it's quite easy: Keep the temperature of the burning part below 80 degree Celsius or 175 F, and you are fine.

        Don't repeat what you have heard somewhere, look into an actual fire fighter manual!

        There are no such statistics. Every report I've ever seen eventually links back to an article from autoinsuranceez.com https://www.autoinsuranceez.co... [autoinsuranceez.com] which is completely wrong. It says the stats come from the NTSB, but the NTSB doesn't track such stats. They also are referring to fires per 100k vehicles SOLD, not vehicles on the road. That's a useless statistic. There are about 290 million cars on the road in the USA and EV's make up less than 2% of them.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shilly ( 142940 )

          Then you've just not looked at that many reports. Here's guidelines for covered car parks from the UK government commissioned from Arup, an engineering group. It has a whole section on frequency, and none of the data are from the source you mention; they're from the UK and Norway instead, and focused on vehicles on the road.

          https://assets.publishing.serv... [service.gov.uk]

          Are you *really* trying to claim that it's just a myth that EVs have lower fire rates than ICE vehicles? Is that truly a hill you're going to die on?

          • Then you've just not looked at that many reports. Here's guidelines for covered car parks from the UK government commissioned from Arup, an engineering group. It has a whole section on frequency, and none of the data are from the source you mention; they're from the UK and Norway instead, and focused on vehicles on the road.

            https://assets.publishing.serv... [service.gov.uk]

            Are you *really* trying to claim that it's just a myth that EVs have lower fire rates than ICE vehicles? Is that truly a hill you're going to die on?

            Interesting article, especially since it is about mitigating the unique fire risks inherent in EV's. For example, no one is worried about potential thermal runaway fires a month after an ICE car has been in an accident. But as to the relative risk, it says:

            "There are several studies [48], [2] regarding the quantity of EV fires at a national and global level which when compared, indicate that the data presented has a high degree of uncertainty; as data capture is not yet sufficiently coordinated at these d

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by shilly ( 142940 )

              Sure. I just wanted to point out that other data exist, it's not all about that autoinsuranceez.com report.

              I personally think Arup over-baked that statement, and that there are good reasons to expect that EVs won't see the rate of increase of fires with ageing that ICE vehicles do. ICE vehicles see this strongly increasing risk with age driven by many independent failure modes that cause an increase in both leak probability and ignition probability. These failures tend to be gradual, cumulative and undetect

      • You pegged my bullshit meter! Begone China troll.

    • Idiot, very much?

  • Balance of payments (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ploulack ( 160193 ) on Monday January 19, 2026 @11:35PM (#65936202)

    Every EV is less oil to import.
    Germany is fast progressing on its energy self sufficienc thx to Putin.

    https://www.dnv.com/news/2025/germany-set-to-secure-energy-independence-but-narrowly-miss-climate-target/

    Add to that the reduced CO2.

  • 2025 sales were already an all-time high in German (Score:3)

    by shilly ( 142940 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2026 @02:43AM (#65936390)

    Germany EV sales:
    2023: 524k
    2024: 381k -- this was when the sales drop happened
    2025: 545k -- recovery already happened

    2026 can be expected to be substantially stronger, given better vehicles and pricing even before the availability of these new subsidies

    • Re:2025 sales were already an all-time high in Ger (Score:4, Informative)

      by Sique ( 173459 ) on Tuesday January 20, 2026 @04:04AM (#65936496) Homepage
      Yes, the first sentence was somewhat misleading. The sharp sales drop was immediately after the sudden phase out of the subsidies at the end of 2023, but from there, steady growth made up for the drop within less than a year. Those subsidies are more about speeding up the conversion to EVs and making them available to people and especially families within the lower income bracket, as they are capped at a yearly household income of 80,000 EUR, and they will increase with each child living in the household. They are not meant to subsidize people shopping for the third car.
  • And let the economy figure out the best way to substitute other forms of energy. Governments are generally incompetent at everything. We should only let the government choose things for us when we have no better alternatives. And for the love of god, please stop direct and indirect subsidizing fossil fuels. So no caving to automakers when they want to save classic car jobs. Have time of use pricing for electricity that reflects the spot price of electricity at least for high income families. Stop zoni
    • Ideally I agree with carbon tax. But the level of public trust in the calculating the credits simply isn't there. Every carbon credit scheme ends up getting pilloried by the left as well as the right, over issues like how many kg of CO2 is saved by protecting some acreage of rainforest, or 'subsidizing' evil rich corporations by letting them sell carbon credits, etc. etc.
      • A carbon tax measures how much carbon you buy and unless you sell it to someone else assumes that you burn all of it and then taxes you accordingly. So if you buy 1 pound of coal or gasoline, it assumes you released about 3 pounds of CO2. A carbon credit is a huge subsidy to people who are currently polluting with the idea that they get rewarded if they reduce their consumption but they face no consequence if they keep on polluting the same amount. Carbon credits are also earned for sequestering carbon.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shilly ( 142940 )

      That would work if the only externalities of ICE vehicles that were not priced in were carbon. But tailpipe emissions and noise are also massively harmful, and should not be ignored.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shilly ( 142940 )

      Also, this is about Germany, where zoning is not the same thing as the US at all, and where most housing does not require a car, because active and public transport options are excellent and there's lots of local amenities.

  • The actual news is that this subsidy will be available to "low to mid" income people. Previous subsidies were primarily aimed at high income people. (Essentially if your company provided you a car you could freely use for private matters, you'd pay much less taxes for this)

    Of course the actual reason people will switch will be very affordable "good enough" electric cars... most likely from Chinese companies, perhaps built in Germany. The German car industry kinda seems to have given up on the idea of provid

    • I see that as well. In my city, you can pretty much count on if they are driving an EV, they are doing well. China has successfully built EV's to the price of what I see one of those fancy golf carts costs in the US. You have to give them credit for that. As to remote kill switches, practically all cars have them now. If BMW/Toyota can have a subscription for heated seats, I imagine they have the capacity to completely disable the car. If nothing else, they could download an "update" which completely wonks

      • Well the future is probably in what's called "Kleinstfahrzeuge" in Germany. Those are cars that are "normal sized". Those don't have the requirement to have cellular connections and generally are much cheaper.

  • Selbstmord. They need professional help.

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