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Electric car purchase voucher extended until 2025, scrapping voucher also for new diesel trucks: the federal government wants the auto industry to move into the future with an additional three billion euros. The industry is pleased.
The federal government is supporting the auto industry with another three billion euros. As previously communicated, it is providing the industry with a total of around five billion euros. Government spokesman Steffen Seibert justified the new aid with a “long-term structural change” that brings “great challenges”.
At the same time, Seibert admitted that the auto industry “after a sharp drop in sales in the first half of the year” is now showing “the first signs of recovery” again. An aid of two billion euros from the stimulus package for the supplier industry had already been promised.
Promote “transformation strategies”
In addition, Seibert has now announced € 1 billion for a “future fund for the automotive industry”. The fund’s objective is to develop medium and long-term “transformation strategies” for the automotive industry. The goal is to join forces and achieve “cooperation between the federal, state and regional levels, but at the same time between companies, unions” and science. In addition, the so-called innovation premium will run until 2025, which corresponds to an additional € 1 billion in aid to industry. The government had already extended its purchase premium for fully electric and plug-in hybrids in the summer until the end of 2021.
Another € 1 billion in aid will be the result of a planned truck fleet renewal program. Half of this money went to the Federal Ministry of Transportation for the purchase of new trucks; the other half was given to companies to renew their own fleets.
On Tuesday evening, Chancellor Angela Merkel again exchanged ideas with representatives of the auto industry about the future of the industry in Germany. At the virtual car summit, as part of the so-called Concerted Mobility Action, several federal ministers and prime ministers also participated, as well as union representatives, as well as leaders of the Union and the SPD.
The auto industry and IG Metall in a good mood
The German auto industry and the IG Metall union welcomed new multi-billion dollar funding commitments from the federal government. The extension of the “innovation premium” for electric cars and other instruments is an aid to climate protection and economic strength, explained the president of the Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA), Hildegard Müller. “Every week we bring 12,000 new electric cars to the streets of Germany.” But these would now also need many new electronic charging stations.
IG Metall boss Jörg Hofmann said a promised trade-in program for heavy commercial vehicles should be viewed positively to gain more financial support. This also applies to the extension of the bonus for electric and hybrid vehicles. The tense employment situation in the industry, especially in many suppliers, makes it necessary to implement measures quickly.
Criticisms of activists and environmental groups
A spokesperson for the climate protection movement Fridays for Future (FFF) criticized the investment package as a “blockage in the mobility transition.” In particular, it condemned the “dirty hybrid purchase premium.” The government and lobbyists invited to the auto summit would delay “the sustainable transformation of the auto industry,” he told AFP news agency. In the end, this only hurts the employees.
Already in the run-up to the summit, the chairman of the Bundestag’s transport commission, Cem Özdemir, had criticized the fact that the federal government had been “moving from one automobile summit to another”. This alone could not “successfully shape a transformation of our most important industry,” said the green politician.
The environmental protection organization BUND had also warned against more “tax donations” to the auto industry. An extension of existing financing for the purchase of electric and plug-in hybrids beyond 2021 would be “unacceptable”, said BUND traffic expert Jens Hilgenberg. Particularly in the case of plug-in hybrids, which are only partially powered by electricity, financing is “fatal” from a climate protection point of view.
