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2) Motorway speeds are limited to 120 Km/h and distances covered in daily use are on average very short, particularly in relation to the US.
There are some important differences in relation to Germany or he US:
1) A much smaller proportion of cars are company cars. Company cars can often be chosen by the individual and there is no home brand bias.
2) Motorway speeds are limited to 120 Km/h and distances covered in daily use are on average very short, particularly in relation to the US.
3) Tesla (Switzerland) was well managed by dedicated professionals right from the beginning. Also service has always been and still is impressive. One service center e.g. started immediately to work in 2 shifts as the workload rose. I for one was never "postponed". Tesla was also able to recruit and train relatively quickly good mechanics out of their "mechatronic" apprenticeships (the cream of the traditional "auto mechanic"). Switzerland's good professional training system was a clear advantage to this aspect of a startup operation.
4) People use the cars to get from A to B and do not live in them. The number of coffee cupholders is not decisive.
In general cars sold tend to be more generously fitted. In particular 4WD is, for obvious reasons, very popular. Any comparison of prices has to make sure like is compared with like.
Yes, indeed, there is no home brand bias, and this is exactly what I meant by calling Switzerland a neutral territory.
There is no escape, IMO, from the overall conclusion that Model S performance against other members of Oberklasse is an ominous sign for an ICE automobile. Notwithstanding the very familiar and often repeated disadvantage of Model S against Oberklasse rivals as far as opulence quotient is concerned, Model S sales are exceptional. Do not forget that Tesla expanded their market share from zero to the level of the leaders in just three years. The fact that this was achieved not necessarily by stealing sales from Oberklasse rivals, but in large measure by bringing new owners to this high price category, must be very painful to those occupying certain boardrooms in European country well known for their exceptional auto industry.
The problem is that the automotive leaders must *electrify* their offerings to compete, but it is not easy to do when so much of the resources are tied in ICE, and require additional resources to maintain ROI. There is natural drive to avoid stranded resources, which leads to dangerous procrastination for going "all in" on EV development.
"It is not a fair fight"
I'm actually surprised how little meaningful reaction we have seen from BMW, Mercedes, and VW (i.e., Audi and Porsche).
By now they must be painfully aware of the impact Tesla is having outside of the German market. And even there it is starting to get noticed.
Yet everything I see from them sounds more like CYA, compliance cars and certainly not am attempt to truly compete. Heck, GM appears to be fielding a more credible EV than they are...
Encouraging news from the german government on subsidying the purchase of ev-cars :
Zeitung: Gabriel plant 5000 Euro Prämie für Kauf von Elektroauto
They'll compromise. 5000€ for cars made by EU manufacturers that are partial zero emission.
I'll bet you a dollar.
With the utter lack of commitment from the German car industry to EVs there's no way the German government will give the foreign competition a boost.
I will admit that I haven't followed this too closely. I read this on Heise.de which points out that while the social democrat Gabriel is in favor of an EV-only incentive, the right wing finance minister is against it. And in the past the CDU/CSU and the car industry have very much been "hand in glove" when it comes to getting the regulations the car makers wanted... And looking at the track record so far with 12363 EVs sold in Germany in 2015 (out of 3.2M new cars - so fewer than 0.4%) and absolutely anemic offerings by the local car makers... I don't think there's an appetite there.Actually, German car industry officials have asked for EV incentives (which actually has the sound of "give us money, then we´ll make EVs"), so they couldn´t really complain. I think you do have a point, but I don´t believe it will come this far. More likely nothing will happen at all.
They'll compromise. 5000€ for cars made by EU manufacturers that are partial zero emission.
I'll bet you a dollar.
With the utter lack of commitment from the German car industry to EVs there's no way the German government will give the foreign competition a boost.
I'll take that bet
I don't think they will restrict it to EU manufacturers
On a more serious note, I've been involved with our local city authority in their ULEV bids, there's lots of EU money coming in and no real differentiation between BEV and PHEV(/EREV). So cynically I think you are right the powerful (primarily German) EU auto industry isn't going to lay down arms just yet with the lobbying.
It has been a very interesting insight however talking to the planners about some of the issues. Some are misguided, with none of the teams driving BEV's other than fleet council Leafs, but some are genuine concerns (including but not limited to: tax revenue worries, grid capacity, scalability, social equality, housing constraints, anti competition issues ). So being generous our lawmakers could be looking at it in a different way than we might. Get 1000 ULEV cars on the road or 100 BEVs, and ultimately just have less vehicles altogether pushing people into mass transit.
I get the distinct impression the focus in EU will be ULEV not ZEV for the next 5 years. I also think a lot of the credits will be EU wide, with the member states varying around a theme how they implement distribution of those credits.
Are the auto makers leading the agenda or just putting maximum resource into the most likely next round of government policy to sell the most vehicles.