Germany ends BEV subsidies
- Germany has decided to end subsidies for BEVs without notice from Monday December 19, 2023. The German government is forced to make significant savings (of the order of 60 billion euros) due to a severe budgetary crisis, declared that these subsidies which had cost some 10 billion euros since 2016 (date of the first subsidies concerning BEVs) were stopped a year before the planned date, these subsidies having to apply initially until the end of the year 2024. Subsidies already requested will be paid, but no new applications will be accepted from Monday December 19, 2023. It should be noted that the maximum subsidy in Germany is 4,500 Euros. It is this subsidy that will disappear. For the record, the subsidy in France is 5,000 to 7,000 euros, the 7,000 euros being reserved for the most modest families.
- These subsidies were introduced to accelerate the “zero emissions” transition in the country. And BEV sales in Germany have actually increased significantly since 2016, helped by subsidies, going from 11,410 units that year to 25,056 in 2017, 36,216 in 2018, 63,491 in 2019, then 194,474 in 2020 (following the launch of the Volkswagen ID3 and ID4), 356,425 in 2021 and 471,394 in 2022. In 2023, Inovev estimates the number of BEV sales in Germany at 500,000 (465,750 units over 11 months). In total, almost 1.7 million BEVs benefited from subsidies in Germany between 2016 and 2023.
- Will the end of subsidies affect BEV sales in Germany? Not necessarily. Most of the carmakers have already announced that they will be responsible themselves for providing this subsidy to customers for a certain period of time. After a few months or even a year of agitation, BEV sales could resume their normal pace without any subsidies or bonuses paid by carmakers. At the same time, the offer of cheaper BEVs is expected to increase.