Volkswagen for everyone? The VW Beetle remained an unaffordable dream for many in the 1950s. In the post-war period, it was only through rising wages in the course of the economic miracle that owning a car became affordable. “Since the middle of the 20th century, the price of a car has been roughly comparable to the salary of a factory worker. For an annual salary you could get a simple new car. This is changing due to the stricter emissions regulations and electromobility,” says Denis Le Vot, head of the Dacia car brand : “The consequence is that more and more customers are currently looking around the used car market.”
Is the time of cheap individual mobility coming to an end? “Driving has never been really cheap. Many underestimate the costs,” emphasizes Stefan Bajohr, chairman of the ecological traffic club VCD. At an average of 36,340 euros, the new car price in 2020 was at a record level – compared to the previous year, the acquisition costs rose by eight percent, as calculated by Deutsche Automobil Treuhand (DAT). Buyers have also invested more than ever in used cars: compared to the price they had to pay ten years ago, there was an increase of a whopping 51 percent. The operating costs and taxes for combustion models are also increasing. And that’s not all.
Driving is considered a political issue: rising costs could alarm voters
Rising fuel prices are always good for a controversy: A surcharge of around 40 cents for a liter of diesel compared to the low prices twelve months ago also makes driving a used car considerably more expensive. This includes the new CO2 pricing, which has been around eight cents since the beginning of the year, and seven cents for gasoline. By the year 2025, the price per tonne of CO2 is to increase gradually from the current 25 euros to up to 55 euros. That will make the fuel even more expensive. Commuters from rural areas with poor public transport connections are the losers in CO2 pricing. The federal government has therefore increased the commuter allowance. But above all, high earners benefited from this, criticized the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) in its position paper “Transport turnaround for everyone”.
Households with low incomes would commute little or no commute and, according to the UBA, receive little tax relief. The flat-rate commuting allowance is also controversial because it encourages the trend towards long commutes and increases the volume of traffic. So how can the mobility transition be designed in a way that is both climate and socially compatible, as an alliance of trade unions, environmental and social associations, including IG Metall, the social association VdK, the nature conservation association Germany Nabu and the VCD demands?
Ever since the ADAC called for “free travel for free citizens” in the 1970s, there seems to have been a customary right to affordable individual mobility. This is also reflected in the subsidy policy, which is increasingly shaped by climate and environmental issues. In this and the coming year alone, the Federal Ministry of Finance calculates 3.7 billion euros for electric car purchase premiums. The federal government is providing a further 2.5 billion euros for the charging infrastructure. If this environmental bonus seems (too) high to you, you should remember the diesel privilege: Due to the lower energy tax on diesel fuel, the federal government foregoing income of almost eight billion euros annually. This subsidy policy has significantly fueled the success of compression-ignition cars since the 1980s.
The multi-billion dollar car aid is financed by all citizens anyway, including the millions of people without cars. The diesel and company car privileges should therefore also be abolished, demands the VCD traffic club. In return, the rising CO2 and energy prices should be cushioned. It is conceivable, for example, to cancel the EEG surcharge, says VCD chairman Stefan Bajohr. “This would lower the price of electricity.” But are such reliefs enough to get more people to switch to more environmentally friendly means of transport?
Cars are getting older and older in Germany: On average, they have been on the hood for almost ten years
A fifth of all new cars are now (partially) electric. But the masses on the streets are different. Instead of buying new electric cars, many car owners are sticking to their old combustion engines. According to the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA), the average age of used cars has increased to currently 9.8 years. Of the 48 million passenger cars in the country, 11.5 million vehicles with outdated Euro 4 emissions standards are still on the road. In addition, there are another 5.8 million cars with the Euro 1 to 3 standards. However, old cars can also be quite sustainable: What lasts for a long time does not have to be replaced by something newly produced (with a large climate backpack due to the battery cells).
“Old, but paid for”: The fact that millions of Germans hold onto their used vehicles is primarily due to pragmatic reasons. For example, because there is not much that you can repair yourself on modern cars. Example dipped headlights: If a headlight used to go blind, you could get a replacement light bulb for a few pfennigs at the gas station. Today half the front of the vehicle sometimes has to be removed. For many interventions, special tools are required, which usually only the expensive authorized workshops have. You should keep your hands off the complex on-board electronics anyway; here it is only read out and, in case of doubt, exchanged.
Because the car manufacturers have a quasi-monopoly on the market, spare parts prices rose by almost five percent between 2019 and 2020, according to the Association of the German Insurance Industry. This continues a development that the GDV has been observing since 2013: “The cost of car spare parts is rising rapidly and significantly faster than the inflation rate: while the consumer price index has risen by 8.8 percent since January 2013, car manufacturers have increased theirs Spare parts prices averaged over 35 percent. ” Younger used cars in particular can quickly become a dime-grave because complicated technology can only be repaired in a specialist workshop.
However, used e-cars are no better either. There are increasing reports of high spare parts prices. The US market analysts from “We Predict” evaluated 1.6 million maintenance and repair orders in a study. The surprising result: the service costs for battery-electric vehicles in the first three months of the equivalent of 105 euros are on average twice as high as for combustion engines. If something breaks with the Stromer, it will obviously be expensive.