2016: China shock 8% quota rule for electric carsYears of deep sleep in the German car industry, a few rolling declarations of abandonment to claim that they were building electric cars. But then the wake-up call from China.
When even the state-run television station ARD is making fun of the German car industry, it is clear how catastrophic the situation is.
It took a very long time. In 2009, I would have expected the Chinese government to realize its 2009 announcement in 2013 or 2014 at the latest. There were various theories about this. For example, model regions in which only electric cars could be registered. "From the point to the area" is a quote from Deng Xiaoping, who meant conducting experiments in model regions and, if successful, spreading them to the whole of China. What then emerged was a quota regulation. In 2018, at least 8% of new registrations must be electric cars.
Here is a report from "die Welt" on August 29, 2014. Quote: But unlike Berlin or Brussels, Beijing is exerting a lot of pressure, has just increased subsidies once again, launched a 16 billion euro program for the charging infrastructure and wants to force the real estate industry to equip at least 30 percent of all parking spaces in new housing developments for electric cars. "They really mean it," says Röhringer and is glad that there is plenty of space for Denza on the BYD site. "Because it's quite possible that China really will soon be the largest EV market in the world."
Only Mercedes has an electric car that is competitive on the Chinese market: the Denza with a range of 400 km. Not familiar with it? Never heard of it? Denza is a cooperation between Mercedes and BYD. The Denza is not sold in Europe. Europeans have to be satisfied with B-grade goods from Mercedes. The Denza has a 62 kWh battery, while the B-goods for Europe only have 28 kWh. The top dog in China is BYD. The electric car BYD e6, which was launched in 2010, was given a larger battery from 60 to 82 kWh in the 2015 model update. If you want even more battery, you will only find it at Tesla. The BYD Qin plug-in hybrid is in the class of the BMW 3 Series, Mercedes C and VW Passat. With a 13 kWh battery, it is significantly larger than its European competitors. Der BYD Tang Plug-in Hybrid ist in der Klasse von BMW X5, BMW X6 und Audi Q7. Mit 18,4 kWh Akku ist dieser deutlich größer als bei der europäischen Konkurrenz. Hier ein Bericht in Auto Motor und Sport. Besonders lesenswert ist dabei ein Leserbrief, hier ein Zitat: "I paid 209,800 RMB (Chinese currency), which is equivalent to 26,977 euros. This price already includes the transfer, registration including license plates and statutory liability (!), as well as unlimited Internet access. Inspections are free of charge in the first year. The warranty is 6 years, maximum 150,000 km." The rest just reads more shocking. Even if German manufacturers had enough production capacity to meet the 8% electric car quota, these vehicles still have to be sold against extremely strong Chinese competition. |
