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Comment by dna_polymerase | Hacker News Reader

> The German government and car industry have agreed to increase joint subsidies for the purchase of electric cars on the same day automobile giant Volkswagen began production of a new all-electric vehicle.

The way that company fucks Germany over and over is truly remarkable. Paid no penalties for the whole Dieselgate in Germany, now after all that they let the taxpayer fund their infrastructure. I bet their solution won't be compatible with Tesla.

Edit: Okay, charging system seems to be compatible, I got angry over the first part.

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>> on the same day automobile giant Volkswagen began production of a new all-electric vehicle.

> The way that company fucks Germany over and over is truly remarkable.

Their political reach certainly is remarkable. I quipped that there will be legal roadblocks for autonomous cars in Germany that "magically" disappear each time a German car maker solves the technical issues that prevents them from going to market with it now.

> Paid no penalties for the whole Dieselgate in Germany

Some of that is blatant protectionism (which applies even when banks defraud the federal government by scheming to recoup taxes they never paid: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/14/cum-ex-german-tax-case-could...), but the other part of no-to-low penalties in Germany compared to certain other countries is due to differences in the legal systems.

Germany first had to establish a process for something akin to class action lawsuits, because that didn't exist here. That was done in response to the Dieselgate thing.

Even with that in place, you won't see the huge sums in Germany that you see in the US as punitive damages (doubling or tripling the value "because") don't exist, either (with no intent to change that): There's potentially a legal penalty and there's damages - for which actual damage needs to be proven.

Or as someone else put it: "If you want to understand German politics, you have to know that the German government is the political arm of the German car industry"

And here a reminder to the "Abwrackprämine" the scrappage program from 2009 to help the automotive industry through the last financial crisis. Different to the programs in other countries, the German scrappage program coincidentally didnt require the new car to meet any modern emission standards.

What do you mean by "fucks over"? People want to reduce CO2, they want a greener Germany, a greener world and more importantly reach the climate agreement. Subsidizing electric cars is one step towards it.

Yes, but that could have been done in this form earlier, and not suspiciously close to VW's EVs' release date.

Since half of the money come from automotive, they were involved in making that arrangement, too. It's quite possible that some VW managers delayed the process for a few weeks to get it all lined up.

> People want to reduce CO2, they want a greener Germany, a greener world and more importantly reach the climate agreement. Subsidizing electric cars is one step towards it.

They could have done that for years, but it happens the day Volkswagen decides to finally build them.

No disagreement there, but this should have happened over a decade ago.

Instead, we got DieselGate, not just one, but at this point, several of them [0] and the responsible parties, even government agencies who knew but tried to hide it, just shrug their shoulders and nothing changes.

Now they can celebrate themselves for putting EV on their agenda when everybody else is already miles ahead. Which is a common theme with German politics and any kind of tech innovation [1]

[0] https://www.rbb24.de/politik/beitrag/2019/10/abgase-dieselsk...

[1] https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/merkel-neuland-...

> German politics and any kind of tech innovation

I came to believe that German politics still associates "high tech" with the cog wheel: more cog wheels, more tech.

Since that doesn't apply to IT, it completely falls by the wayside. And since EVs have less of them than an ICE car, they're also lower tech than regular cars.

So far that's the only way I could make sense of it all.

That would also explain the tendency to still bet on "rare metals" aka copper as a transmission medium for the Internet.

I think that has more to do with Projekt Opal by the Bundespost (see https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Die-Glasfaser-in-ihrem-Lauf... from 2001): An early fiber network project that tanked and cut off entire villages from any newer technology than 33.6kbps modems for a decade or so.

Related to that, it surprised me how spotty the Internet was when I drove from Salzburg all the way to Strasbourg via Karlsruhe a few weeks ago (my gf who was riding shotgun used a more explicit word to describe it). Supposedely those are the best developed regions of Germany (we passed close to Munich and Stuttgart, i.e. the hometowns of BMW and Merecedes). The highway itself (the A8) is in need of further improvements especially the part between Salzburg and Munich.

The money put in subsidizing electric vehicles is more well spend in public transportation. An 30 electric cars are not as green as a single bus.

Subsidizing public transportation will never happen at scale in Germany, this piece should be proof enough for that.

A better way is to put a big tax on CO2 making driving ICE cars less attractive. They can then use the money from this tax to build bike paths and give tax breaks for electric vehicles. Preferably bicycles and light vehicles which use less resources to produce and operate.

> I bet their solution won't be compatible with Tesla.

It's a standard charger system that I've seen all kinds of cars (incl. Teslas) connected to. Also: Renaults, VWs, BMWs, Mitsubishis.

> Paid no penalties for the whole Dieselgate in Germany,

German prosecutors have charged VW's former CEO and some other executives [1]. I think it's very rare for bigwigs to be held personally responsible for pollution anywhere in the world so I see this as a refreshing change. The company itself paid a fine in Germany (one billion, I think) and has paid fines in other countries, as well as recalling a lot of cars.

As far as government support goes, well, Tesla made a ton of money from selling pollution permits and I think their car prices were also directly subsidised. I'm sure the big Chinese EV manufacturers were supported at crucial times as well. Industrial policy can be corrupt but it is a necessary part of a big, national or international level effort and I don't think there is any point in pretending otherwise.

[1] https://apnews.com/faeff4b8855c4b0daf538599ae3f9db2

VW penalties:

- 5 million, the maximum for this misdemeanor "Ordnungswidrigkeit",

- 995 million levy of infringer's profits.

Given that they couldn't have sold their cars if the real emission values would have been known that number is ridiculously low (we are talking about 10 million cars sold between 2007 and 2015).

Now the article mentions 3.5 billion will be invested in electric vehicle infrastructure subsidies.

Short term, Tesla gets the largest benefit from this, as they are delivering the Model 3 in numbers already and the Model 3 would qualify (though not for the full amount, as this is only for cars less than 40000€). Behind that though, VW is to gain a lot from it too for certain.

Why not? There are standardized ways to charge your car.

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