A German government program meant to put more than 300,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2019 only manged to add 9,000 hybrids and electric vehicles over the past six months.
The program received nearly 2,000 applications within the first month of its existence, but slowed to a crawl thereafter. Only 9,000 applications have been received since its start. Reports show that of the 9,023 applications received, only 5,100 were for pure all-electric cars.
Tesla Motors customers haven’t been able to elbow into the incentive, because the program is capped to vehicles with a starting price of less than $62, 000. The California-based electric vehicle automaker did strip out extra doodads in the Model S to reduce the starting price and get access to the discount.
Germany plans on bringing one million electric vehicles to market by 2020. With oil prices so low, however, and cheap gas-powered cars so ubiquitous, it has been a rough go for German automakers to deliver on that plan. Automakers have only managed to place 30,000 electric cars on German roads since 2015.
Germany’s legislature decided in July to end all green energy subsidies due to the strain wind and solar power placed on the country’s electricity grid.
The government plans to replace most of the subsidies for local green energy with a system of competitive auctions where the cheapest electricity wins. The average German pays 39 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity because of intense fiscal support for green energy.
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