Daimler home state favours banning old diesel cars from cities

The government of southern Germany’s state of Baden-Württemberg, home to carmaker Daimler, wants to ban old diesel cars in cities, report Josef Kelnberger und Max Hägler in Süddeutsche Zeitung. Only a “blue badge” could reduce nitrogen oxide levels below legal limits, said Green state premier Winfried Kretschmann, who heads a coalition government of Greens and Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats in the state’s capital Stuttgart.
Kretschmann said he would start a corresponding initiative in Germany’s upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, and hoped for support from the car industry. He said a blue badge would show that diesel engines can be clean, and would also quicken technological development. He said diesel engines would be needed as a “low-emission” bridge technology and that 50,000 jobs in Baden-Württemberg alone depended on the technology. Daimler said it was open to the blue badge, as long as the transition period was sufficiently long.

Read the article in German here.

For background, read the new CLEW dossier The Energiewende and German carmakers.