Status: 08.12.2022 12:05 p.m
E-car owners can only apply for the purchase premium after registration. The responsible authorities should therefore work until the end of the year, the car industry is demanding. Because in 2023 a lot will change.
For consumers who have recently bought an electric car, the environmental bonus could be significantly lower than expected or, in the worst case, even be eliminated completely. Because the date of the purchase contract is not decisive for the amount of the state subsidy, but that of the approval – which could lead to a bottleneck at the end of the year. “We are currently receiving worrying reports that some registration offices want to close as early as the middle of the month,” write the Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA), the Association of International Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (VDIK) and the Central Association of German Motor Vehicle Trades (ZDK) in a letter to the municipal umbrella organizations, the tagesschau.de present. Obtaining a vehicle license this year is therefore likely to be tight.
Subsidy will change from next year
The central associations are therefore calling on cities, districts and municipalities to “maintain the ability of the vehicle registration offices to work in the last few days of this year so that vehicles with alternative drives can still be registered in the current year”. This is the only way to ensure that customers can make full use of the subsidy and do not go away empty-handed.
The background to the time pressure is the changed rules for subsidies for electric cars. So far, German e-car funding included the environmental bonus introduced in 2016, which is made up of a state share and a manufacturer share, as well as the innovation bonus. This was supplemented in 2020 and doubled the state share again. Depending on the list price of the model, buyers of a battery-powered car have so far received up to 9,000 euros, owners of plug-in hybrids up to 6,750 euros.
It is true that cars with electric drives will continue to be subsidized by the state beyond 2022; however, the subsidy will be significantly reduced. According to the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection (BMWK), from 2023 the federal government’s share of the subsidy rates for cars that cost less than 40,000 euros will drop from the current 6,000 to 4,500 euros. For cars that have a net list price of 40,000 euros to 65,000 euros, there will only be 3,000 euros instead of the previous 5,000 euros. In addition, there is the subsidy from the manufacturer.
Approval procedure is apparently not changed
In addition, the entire subsidy pot for the premiums is limited to a specific total budget. A total of 3.4 billion euros are available from the Climate and Transformation Fund (KTF) for the next two years. 2.1 billion are planned for 2023 and 1.3 billion for the following year. Once the money is gone, the funding ends. In addition, the subsidy will be concentrated on purely battery-electric vehicles in the future – plug-in hybrids will no longer apply.
For these reasons, the ADAC has long advocated reserving the funding. According to the automobile club, there should be grandfathering for those who ordered a vehicle this year and could count on the high premium. In addition, in future the full amount should be approved at the time the order is placed, ADAC spokeswoman Katrin van Randenborgh said in an interview in July tagesschau.de. Payment can then be made upon approval to prevent abuse.
At the end of the week, the BMWK wants to publish the new funding guideline in the Federal Gazette. Despite the impending problems with the approval authorities, the approval procedures are apparently not to be changed. “The date of the funding application, which requires vehicle registration, remains decisive for the funding,” said a spokeswoman for the “Handelsblatt”. The conversion would have led to a great deal of additional bureaucracy.
Every fifth new car in November with an electric drive
According to the VDA, VDIK and ZDK, the approval of delivered vehicles before the end of the year is of great importance for many customers. The automotive industry is therefore asking the regional authorities responsible for the registration offices for support. “Specifically, it’s a matter of the registration offices implementing registrations as needed up to the last day of the year, i.e. also for larger numbers of vehicles, even if they are applied for at very short notice.”
The upward trend in electric drives is continuing: According to the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA), almost 58,000 electric cars were newly registered in Germany in November. That was 44 percent more than in the same month last year. According to the KBA, more than every fifth new car had an electric drive – with the exception of plug-in hybrids.
“Sales of vehicles with alternative drives increased despite the ongoing crisis,” confirm the leading associations. As of November 1st, there were already 1.65 million electric vehicles on Germany’s roads. The industry is thus on the path to the federal government’s goal of having 15 million electric cars on Germany’s roads by 2030.
E-car boom in Germany could end soon
According to a study by the Center Automotive Research (CAR), which the “Handelsblatt” reports today, the boom in electric cars in Germany could end soon. The growth of pure electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids is already dying down noticeably. The growth rate is currently 4.5 percent. According to the CAR study, it was 73 percent last year. The market is even likely to shrink in 2023 and 2024.
At the beginning of December, car expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer had already forecast that sales figures would drop from 720,000 cars in the current year to just 362,000 e-cars in 2024. This would also almost halve the market share of electrically powered automobiles from 27.8 percent to 14 percent. In addition to the high electricity prices, important reasons for the decline are the capping of state subsidies.
It remains to be seen to what extent the cuts will actually affect demand for electric cars. But according to ADAC spokeswoman van Randenborgh, a big plus point disappears: “We assume that the majority of buyers also opted for an electric vehicle because of the high subsidy.” This incentive is now falling a bit away. According to the ADAC, roughly 460,000 vehicles can be funded with the funding for 2023.