Germany’s coalition agreement could boost production of e-vans

A provision on financial support of commercially used electric vehicles in Germany’s coalition agreement could boost the production of e-vans, Jürgen Pander writes on Spiegel Online. In the treaty that still hinges on the approval of the Social Democrats’ (SPD) party basis, the would-be governing parties SPD and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU alliance agreed to support commercially used e-cars with an asset write-down of 50 percent in the year of the purchase, Pander says. Commercial vehicle manufacturers like VW, Daimler, Ford or Iveco “have realised” that small e-vans of up to 3.5 tonnes payload “do not only make sense but are also demanded by many companies”. For commercially used e-vans, the still limited range of electric cars is less of a problem than for many other cars since they usually drive less than 100 kilometres per day on predefined routes in inner cities and can be routinely charged in the company’s depot overnight, Pander argues. Researcher Lukas Minnich, of the Institute for Applied Ecology (Öko-Institut), adds that “the greatest driver in demand for e-vans is the fear of looming driving bans for diesel cars in inner cities”.

Read the article in German here.

See the CLEW factsheet on Germany’s coalition agreement and the CLEW dossier on Germany’s carmakers and the Energiewende for background.