The Telegraph reports Berlin court orders German capital to ban most diesel vehicles on 11 major roads to counter pollution.
Hamburg was first in May. Stuttgart, home of Mercedes and Porsche, was second in July.
A diesel ban in Frankfurt came third.
Only older cars that do not meet emission standards are banned, but diesel is now toxic. No one wants to buy diesel.
Merkel Can No Longer Protect Car Makers
Adding to the woes, Merkel has lost control. She is no longer able to protect German industry.
The European Parliament just voted to cut CO2 emissions by 40%. The European ministers voted for a 35% reduction. The latter is binding.
Car sales dropped sharply in September.
Eurointelligence on Autos and German Industry
The German government – backed by its usual eastern European allies – fought in vain to head off the tougher standards.
Germany’s environment minister Svenja Schulze deliberately – and astonishingly – weakened her own negotiating position by making clear that her personal preference would have been for tougher targets than those she was officially defending as her government’s position.
An administrative court in Berlin decided yesterday that the city of Berlin needs to ban diesel cars – compliant with Euro norms five and earlier – in important areas of the city, including Friedrichstrasse and Leipziger Strasse. There is no ban for petrol cars as the emissions in question are nitrogen oxide. The ban will have to be implemented by July 2019 at the latest. The plaintiff was a German environmental NGO, which had sued for a city-wide ban of diesel.
Car Sales Plunge
The FT reports that Volkswagen global sales fell by nearly 20% in September as a direct result of the new worldwide light vehicles test procedure, which took effect last month. The fall was expected to some extent, and followed an increase in sales in August. The fall in deliveries in Germany alone was almost 50%,
Sueddeutsche Zeitung quotes the head of VW as saying that the number of jobs in its German factories will fall by 100,000 in the next decade, an estimate we still consider relatively optimistic.
Now that cities are imposing diesel bans, the car industry’s plan B had been to step up production of petrol cars, but this strategy is now double-crossed by the new CO2 emissions targets.
Quota for Electric Cars
FAZ thus calls the decision a quota for electric cars. While this is technically not correct, it has a similar effect. It is a development the German industry had sought to avoid because it is not one in which they have a natural leadership. We would add to that a forecast of our own: the import quota for cars will have to rise substantially for the EU to meet its own emission standards. This will become of the biggest factors driving the inevitable de-industrialisation of Europe – a socio-economic shift which nowadays has widespread political support but for which the EU and its member states are not prepared.
Years Behind the US and China
Germany is years behind the US and China when it comes to producing electric cars.
It is also years behind the US on self-driving cars.
Eventually, Germany will catch up, but that may take many years, if not a decade.
This is what happens to cheaters when politicians can no longer protect them.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Since governments in EU have decided they will destroy over half of their current industries by 2030 thereby also destroying all the well paying jobs in those industries and the taxes those industries and those jobs produce there should be a realization from investors that:
EU will never pay it’s debts since they have no ability now and they will have even less ability in 2030.
Germany and France are completely toast due to destroying their industries as a political choice on top of creating debt bubbles that have made many local people be unable to have more than 1-2 kids since they can not upgrade their house/home and many families have never formed due to this and single working women and men work to pay for their one-room-apartment that costs the same as 4-room apartment before the bubble blowing and on top of that Merkel and Germany lured 1+ million migrants to Germany and most were given a residence permit and now the 2 year pause on family re-unification has expired so this 1+ million will bring 3-5 million migrants to Germany as family re-unification and Germany lets even FAILED asylum seekers stay with the new plan being give them a residence permit if they find a low paid job to stay in Germany and get the residence permit and then they can get on welfare again.
40% of German under 5-year olds are immigrants already and this will go past 50% shortly.
France has millions and millions of unemployed or low wage job working Africans living in France and more are coming all the time due to family re-unifications so France having control on it’s borders with Italy and now Spain to stop migrants is of little help.
In addition to all EU countries debts becoming un-repayable with this 35% reduction decision it means the welfare model in Germany, Sweden and every western European and Northern European country is broken.
Fall of Europe and EU will be discussed like fall of Rome in schools of the future…
Germany has become a synonym for hypocrisy. It really does not matter what the EU says, Germany will agree to anything which is Politically Correct and will then do something quite different while claiming credit for what they promised but did not deliver. As RonJ points out, Germany shut down zero emissions nuclear power plants to prevent “Anthropogenic Global Warming” and then found it had to expand the burning of nasty low-quality brown coal to keep the lights on. But Germans still pretend that they are the world leaders in the (entirely unnecessary) reduction in CO2.
“EU ministers agreed to binding cuts in CO2 emissions of 35% by 2030. The German auto industry won’t be able to deliver.”
When reality meets fantasy. Germany was also forced to build more coal fired power plants in order to meet the reality of their on demand electric power needs.
“The European Parliament just voted to cut CO2 emissions by 40%. The European ministers voted for a 35% reduction. The latter is binding.”
Binding, all right. Unless it gets serious. Then it”s time to lie…..
German industry funds the EU. The Germans ultimately pay for every booze bottle consumed in Brussels. From a political POV, they’re the European equivalent of Goldman Sachs, trial lawyers, MilInd complex, realtors and the rest of the FIRE complex in America rolled into one. The EU will cross them, for real, about the same time American politicians will step up to their paymasters.
Heck, it’s even more lopsided, as German industry actually create some value, rather than just stealing it. At least the Americans above, MilInd possibly excepted, will eventually run out of other people’s money to steal, hence will be forced to retract.
Companies like VW, Porsche, Audi and others have already announced that they will have production ready cars in the 2021-23 timeframe and it is expected (from what has been showcased already) that these will be as good, if not better than cars made in the US.
Besides, Audi is supposed to the leader in self-drive being the only one with Level 4 automation.
So, how exactly do we say the following …
” It is also years behind the US on self-driving cars.
Eventually, Germany will catch up, but that may take many years, if not a decade.”
Agreed and there is an impressive roadmap and new Audi EV can be driven at full speed in high temperature as long as battery has juice. Some other manufacturers need to wind back top speed to prevent battery overheating.
There are also new light E.V. truck in manufacture for city distribution. No diesel, lower noise, return to base usage.
I’m no EU fan but this is a way to fortress their market. There is global overcapacity for vehicles. It’s a no -tariff way to protect the market.
Also, having seen high end Merc, self drive is not far off. Or at least little for the driver to do.
Expect the prices to begin to fall too.
Achilles heel is infrastructure for fast charge.
These changes also help support city mass transit usage etc.
Sat in light EV truck. Was impressive. May be some of the first self drive as low speed inner-city delivery and now less diesel traffic. Designed to look very unthreatening and easy to manufacture in pop-up factories.
The European Parliament just voted to cut CO2 emissions by 40%. The European ministers voted for a 35% reduction. The latter is binding. Meanwhile, volcanoes across the globe continue to emit green house gasses in violation of the EU. Of course, the remedy would be a stiff fine.
I agree. Icelandic volcanoes such as Katla are over due a major eruption. Expect Northern European temperatures to fall when they do.Have the IPCC factored this black swan event in their calculations in much the same way that the quants failed to do with the Russian currency crisis in 1998. They won a Nobel Prize and we ended up with the wreckage of Long Term Capital Management.
Somehow I don’t see the European Parliament or a Berlin Court going into the ever growing muslim no-go areas to enforce their “bans”
Snopes is run by liberal snowflakes and it’s fact checks are really sad.
As binding as the stability and growth pact?
Agree, Germans have been promising Level 3 autonomy and EVs like forever and just postpone their asiprational goals.
But my main concern is – aren’t you slowly turning into Tesla bull by acknowledging that US leads in electrification and self-driving tech?
On EV front the only US company worth to mention besides Tesla is GM that produces Chevy Bolt.
On self-driving front the only US company worth to mention besides Tesla is Waymo/Google.
You’re not comparing apples to apples. A “promise” means a lot more in German than in Muskian. In Japan even more so. The people leading and fronting German and Japanese car makers, are people with some understanding of how a car works, how they are built and how they do not currently work. Not salesmen hawking paper, to starry eyed children on Fed welfare.
German (and also Japanese) manufacturers have been giving these promises just as much as Tesla.
I think it is psychology here at play where if anonymous VW, Audi or BMW PR department makes promise and fails to deliver then no concrete person at company is held responsible by public and undelivered promises go unnoticed. I remember very well how they promised to have cars with super low mpgs and L3 driving few years ago.
If a concrete person from a company is giving promises (like Musk), then it stays in your memory and next time you will scrutinize him in case he missed another deadline. But he is not much worse than his competition. Try to look objectively.
I just returned from several european countries and I can tell you they love diesels, they are everywhere. Every cab and van I rode in was diesel. They have models not available in the US that get incredible mileage, which is why europeans have not been interested in electric vehicles. BTW I did not see any exhaust from any of them, and I did not see any smog. I want to buy one of those diesel cars but they are not allowed in the US.
It’s “windy season” now. Dead calm air, often in high traffic city centers, are when you notice diesel exhaust. Especially if coming directly in from fresher air. Even the latest models, when brand new, aren’t consistently as clean as gas burners. If kept in tip-top lab shape, and driven according to emissions tests, they can look fine. But any deviation from that, and things no longer look as pretty.
Diesels would never have been a “thing” in Europe at all, were it not for their childish obsession with CO2 “emissions.” That is why they created tax regimes that favored overly complex, expensive and ultimately polluting diesel passenger cars to begin with. Rather than the infinitely more rational distribution of diesel for long, heavy intracity trips, and gas for inner city. Plug-in diesel hybrids may turn out to work for them, although you’re layering costly on top of costly. But if anyone can make that work, it’s the German auto industry.