The government’s new 4,000-euro bonus for electric vehicles is a dud. Why are the Germans so reluctant to buy EVs? And why is there is little support for e-bikes? Craig Morris takes a look. Read English blogs, and you are likely to think that electric cars are going to oust combustion engines by 2025. Case in point: my colleague Michael Barnard’s snarky list of things EV owners miss about their old gas or diesel cars—you know, the cost, the smell, the inefficiency, etc. Of course, one could easily make such an ironic list for EVs as well, and it would include the cost, “range anxiety,” etc. But another journalist, David Roberts, has you covered: “Electric vehicles can go far enough. People just don’t know it yet.” There’s truth to both articles. And yet, both sound a bit like wishful thinking. In May, Germany got a bonus for EVs (4,000 euros off the sticker price) and hybrids (3,000). We now have the sales figures for the first three months, and they are sobering: 3,000 vehicles. In … Continue reading German EV sales go nowhere