Maybe Germany should scrap Merz instead?
this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2025
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Sounds like German automotive is still not learning that they'll be irrelevant if they keep kicking the can down the road. Do it, China isn't going to wait.
As a German I welcome that. It finally kills the pro car lobby in Germany and we get the cities we actually should have in the first place.
Munich is making good progress on cycle lanes! ☺
Most German cities do, but it would be much easier and faster with a weaker opposition.
If you ever visitied a country lacking an own car lobby - no, getting rid of your domestic car lobby does not make cities livable. You need politics actually centered on the common good.
German cities already have pretty good public transport and density. That is the actually expensive bit. You pretty much have to just have to get rid of cars in some areas, remove parking lots and lanes and add some bike lanes. Even that is slowly happening in most cities. If you weaken the car lobby, then you could get some very quick massive improvements. Just look at what Paris is doing as an example, but maybe not quite as quick and radical.
Oh, they did learn their lesson. They can do whatever they want, they will always be saved by the government.
German automotive is learning, and excelling. Porsche and Mercedes have huge electric programs, and outshine everyone else in the west. Especially at self-driving, they have the only full self driving cars, which Tesla cannot replicate.
So, they're lying. Common sense check? China's cars are better than Germany's. Yeah, that's bullshit.
Doesn't matter if you have to pay 100.000 Euros for such a car and you can get a china one for 35.000... people vote with their wallet and fact is, not many have that much money laying around
there's now plenty of European EVs around the €20 000 mark that are good enough, same as the Chinese. There's going to be plenty of Chinese cars in Europe, same as Japanese or Korean, but this notion peddled by some people that the European brands are going to disappear is just moronic.
Which ones?
The one I know is Dacia Spring, which has very little range and 1 NCAP star.
Others start around 30k.
You can get here a Renault 5 for €16 726 right now, although that's a special offer and will go back to 20 something soon enough.You also have the eC3 which is selling for €19 654 right now.
Holy Molly, where do you live? I see Renaults 5 for 27.5k and eC3 from 23k.
Southern Europe.
I have a sudden urge to move...
The Spring is a rebadged Chinese car. There are no 20k€ electric cars brand new that are built in Europe. Renault plans to sell the cheaper version of the Renault 5 for more.
"Chinese" one. what is "china one"?
It's the local currency in the PRC, but that's not important right now.
local currency in china is "china one"?
Yuan - western pronunciation makes it sound like one.
It's not a combustion engine ban. it's about not producing new ones.
It's a phase out, right?
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I am so fucking fed up with every right wing numbnut calling it a combustion engine ban. It does not ban combustion engines.
All manufacturers need to do, is make their combustion engines clean, then they can continue selling them 2035 and beyond. But it's obvious, they are incapable of doing so, combustion engines have been pretty stagnant, almost as if they have reached their limits...
I say Germany should scrap 2025 Merz Chancellorship
Please literally replace any instance of "German's Merz" with "Coal, Gas & Car lobby"
Please literally replace any instance of “German’s Merz” with “Coal, Gas & Car lobby”
On the topic (autotranslated):
“PURPLE – Change from the VDA”: A leaked position paper from the Union shows how the party allows entire passages to be dictated by the automotive industry lobby association. No problem for the CDU.
Merz: „I am the lobby.“ (in Palpatine‘s voice.)
The ironic thing is that all this won't help the German car industry at all. The transition to EVs is inevitable and it is coming fast. For Germany, this means that a lot of people in so far pretty well-off regions are either going to need new jobs, or will depend on welfare - the same way as coal workers in the Ruhr area in the 1980ies, or ship builders in Bremerhaven, Glasgow and Manchester in the 90ies.
And that's also the consequence of using a "market-driven approach". If you want the market to take care of the clean energy transition by pricing, you accept that any companies that don't adapt will go bust.
EU says Germany should scrap Merz's blatant support for Oil and Gas industry.
We know it is the car industry, since there was a leak, which showed Merz party having their position directly edited by one of their lobbying organizations.
Germany is intressting in that basically all the oil assets are foreign owned. For gas the big lobbying group are the utilities.
He is right. We should scrap the 2035 target and move it to 2030 instead.
Yes, I know that thisnis not wahrnehmen meant. Merz is the slightly better educated and mannered German version of Trump and behaves accordingly.
Hmm, I wonder if there's a coordinated effort by lobbies to have this kind of plans scrapped. Knowing the car and oil industry, probably.
Or this is probably just a coincidence: Quebec government lifts planned 2035 ban on gas-powered vehicle sales
A paper was recently leaked that the CDU‘s (Merz’s party) position on these topics is directly dictated by the car industry.
Hmm, I wonder if there’s a coordinated effort by lobbies to have this kind of plans scrapped. Knowing the car and oil industry, probably.
I like to think that finally they realized that even this, like most of the green target approved with the past years to please the Green Party, is nice in theory but completely impracticable in the timeframe they set. And the problem are not the car manufacturers, but all the infrastructure you need to set up even before starting to phase out ICE cars.
But even if somehow (in the form of "somehow Palpatine return") you would be able to convert all the car production infrastructure, which means to convert a lot more industries that the car manufacturers, you have the problem to set up all the support infrastructure for the EV cars, like a lot more public charger (ideally one for every gas station), how to solve the problem to install charger in places like historical inner center of cities, in condos which have not the space to install them and things like this.
Not to mention the need to produce a lot more electricity and upgrade the grid so that it can transport a lot more energy also to every little small village in the nation (big cities have public transports, but most of the people do not live in big cities)
So yes, switch to EV cars is a nice idea, but to set a deadline to produce ICE car without starting to plan how to make the transition is stupid.
I just hope the other EU countries do not allow this.
No paywall: https://archive.is/SUJqL
"We made the wrong decision, and we will correct it," said the German chancellor at a conference of his SME association in Cologne. He would "put a spoke in Brussels' wheel."
It's insane how they fetishize fossiles.
It’s insane how they fetishize fossiles.
Ok, quick question: do you really think that all the infrastructures are ready to handle, let's say, a 50% increase in EV cars ?
2035 is 10 years.
Can the infrastructure handle the increase right now if we do nothing? No. The question is "will it be ready?". And yes, they can and will be in 2035. Studies predict readyness for substantial growth by around 2027-30 in Europe, provided further investment.
I haven't read them all, but here are some sources: https://www.acea.auto/press-release/powering-europes-green-freight-future-acea-and-eurelectric-call-for-urgent-grid-reform-and-investment/ https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/grid-agency-confirms-plans-five-new-large-scale-power-transmission-lines-germany https://te-cdn.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/files/2023_07_TE_AFIR_grid_readiness_final.pdf https://www.sei.org/perspectives/blackouts-arent-new-but-is-europes-grid-ready-for-the-next-one
Also, renewables have already overtaken coal as the biggest source of electricity. So it shouldn't be a question of lacking energy. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2rz08en2po
The question is “will it be ready?”. And yes, they can and will be in 2035. Studies predict readyness for substantial growth by around 2027-30 in Europe, provided further investment.
The "provided further investment." is the key point. What I see is that they want to ban the production of ICE engine in 2035 but they are doing nothing to have the infrastructure ready.
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