Car club refuses top "green" car ranking / Solar storage on the rise

German carmakers already advertise electric vehicles that can be almost fully charged within minutes, but they keep quiet about the fact the necessary charging stations don't exist yet, writes Lukas Bay in a commentary for Handelsblatt. "But the roll-out of high-voltage charging stations would be a great opportunity for German carmakers to show their tail lights to competitor Tesla." Bay says the highly profitable German premium brands could easily afford the necessary investments and should cooperate on the issue because charging time is seen as an important argument for the success of e-cars. "The German car giants should stop waiting for further state support and investments by the utilities (...) Jointly, they should dare more in their domestic market Germany."

While the energy transition is one of most important political projects in Germany, the end does not justify the means, Martin Wanninger writes in the Passauer Neue Presse. Greatest efforts are called for to achieve greater energy efficiency, but not great sins, he adds. The introduction of a "flexible" tax would be one such sin – “and a violation of the basic tenets of Germany’s economic policy.” Raising taxes when oil prices fall and lowering them when oil rises, which the government is apparently considering in its new Green Paper on efficiency, is nothing more than a fixed state price on energy, Wanninger argues.

For more details, read yesterday's CLEW article Lagging efficiency to get top priority in Germany’s Energiewende.