Status: 02/16/2022 3:12 p.m
Economics Minister Habeck wants to adjust the promotion of e-cars and extend the minimum holding period for the vehicles. This is intended to stop the abuse of electric car subsidies.
In order to prevent abuse of the e-car subsidy, Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) wants to extend the minimum holding period for the vehicles. In the course of the changes in funding already planned for 2023, the Federal Ministry of Economics announced today that it was examining an extension of the holding period, thereby confirming a report by “Wirtschaftswoche”. In ministry circles it was said that the minimum holding period should then increase to one year. Anyone who sells their subsidized e-car after less than a year must then pay back the subsidy.
E-car premium as a business model
The minimum holding period for e-car buyers is currently only six months. But that apparently promotes the abuse of electric car funding. E-car buyers currently receive up to 9,000 euros from the state. Buyers who sell their car abroad after six months can make such a cut, as the vehicle usually loses less in value within six months.
After twelve months, the situation could look very different again, the Ministry of Economic Affairs suspects. Then the loss in value of the new car is likely to exceed the e-car premium, so selling it abroad is less attractive.
German state promotes e-mobility abroad
In fact, it is “not the point of the funding and the rules on the minimum holding period that subsidized cars are regularly resold to other European countries after the minimum holding period has expired and that this becomes a business model for dealers and buyers,” says the ministry.
Car expert Stefan Bratzel from the Center of Automotive Management (CAM) in Bergisch Gladbach estimates that around 30,000 e-cars were sold abroad as young used cars in the first nine months of 2021 alone, as he told the “Wirtschaftswoche”. Conservatively estimated, “in 2021 alone” up to 240 million euros in state subsidies for purely electric vehicles should not have been used appropriately.