According to our Federal Chancellor, there should be 1,000,000 electric cars on German streets by the year 2020.
To me, it seems unlikely that we can even get anywhere near that number of cars powered by electricity and still being equipped with anything remotely like the standards of modern cars with combustion motors (driving performance, heating, air conditioning, electrical appliances and functions, not to mention cruising range).
I can, however, imagine that the million could be reached by 2020 if we count all electronic vehicles, such as pedelecs, electrical bi- and tricycles, electric carts and the like. More than 90% of these vehicles (or at least their fundamental technical components) will probably be imported from China.
And I cannot think of anything the German Government could do to change matters in this respect. Except if you suddenly introduced a drastic speed limit and increased the tax on fossil energy just as drastically.
The German producers could sell their combustion-powered cars to China and develop simple and economical electric cars for the home market, which will (perhaps) be bought at home, too. Those cars would have to be economical, because electricity, after all, does not originate at wall outlet. And as soon as China has no money left to buy fuel, we could sell all the simple electric cars to China.
But as far as I know, nobody in this country has these kinds of visions.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.:
I took the pictures from the central media archive Wikimedia Commons.
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