“In its current form, the combustion engine is obsolete.” This is how categorical the new German Transport Minister, in office since January, openly comments that anyone who buys a new car today should take this into account. However, the liberal Volker Wissing contemplates the possibility that combustion engines continue to work beyond 2035, the date on which the European Commission wants them to be banned, as long as they work exclusively with synthetic fuels.
Wissing goes to his office in Berlin by subway every day and has a hybrid car in his homeland, Rhineland Palatinate, which he uses only on some weekends and almost always in electric mode. Its commitment to reducing CO2 emissions is indisputable, but the energy crisis that Europe is facing, as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions affecting the sector, is now forcing us to act cautiously and to reconsider that Mobility needs are very individual and different. “I want to be an advocate for better mobility for all, which means I will also be an advocate for cyclists, train drivers and public transport users,” Wissing said in a recent interview. He will do everything in his power to ensure that Germany becomes climate neutral, “the sooner the better”, but he has also stated that “we want combustion engines to remain an option if they only run on synthetic fuels”, and This adds to the reluctance expressed so far by France and the Czech Republic to the total ban of this type of engine in 2035.
Wissing has also distanced himself from his own plans to significantly increase the electric car purchase bonus and add a scrapping bonus, saying in an interview with Deutschlandfunk that he is not “fighting for absurdly high funding” but rather a switch to climate-neutral mobility with the help of market-based incentives.
His turns are related to the internal opposition he finds both within his own Liberal Party (FDP) and among the partners that make up Olaf Scholz’s “traffic light coalition”, most especially The Greens. The deputy leader of the FPD parliamentary group, Carina Konrad, said that “it was not in vain that we were able to promote a cross-sectoral vision of the CO2 reduction targets in the coalition agreement. This makes it clear that neither an economically and ecologically absurd scrapping premium nor a higher purchase premium will come”, suggesting that, in order to achieve climate protection, independence from energy imports and a perspective for the automotive industry to the same extent, market-based incentives would have to dominate. From Los Verdes, the president of the Conference of Regional Ministers of Transport, Senator for Transport of Bremen Maike Schaefer, continues to demand a speed limit. “Speed limits of 100, 80 and 30 kilometers per hour on motorways, rural roads and cities have more effect than purchase premiums and cost next to nothing,” she argues. In any case, Germany reprograms its incentive policy in a context in which they are not necessary for an automotive industry that is having delivery problems and that what it requests as soon as possible is a good charging infrastructure for electric cars, especially in cities. .
Both Wissing and Konrad campaign for synthetic fuels, so-called e-fuels, to be approved “quickly.” The use of renewable synthetic fuels is “essential to achieve climate goals in transport”, according to a federal government response to a request from the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. This includes electronic fuels, which are produced using electricity from water and carbon dioxide. However, these fuels are especially suitable for “difficult to electrify” modes of transport. Therefore, the federal government wants to continue supporting research and promoting the market launch of synthetic fuels in both aviation and ground vehicles. The main thing is “to allow climate-neutral flights in the future”, the document says, but the Federal Ministry for the Environment, which gave the answer on behalf of the government, can also imagine e-fuels in cars or trucks in road traffic, although perhaps more marginally. The Ministry notes that “for technical reasons, certain amounts of e-diesel and e-gasoline are always produced in the production of e-kerosene.” These could then, for example, be “used in maritime or road traffic”.
The hidden costs of the electric car
Studies assume that the cost of electricity-based liquid fuels is currently at least €4.50 per liter of diesel equivalent, according to the German government. With electricity-based fuel production currently limited to demonstration and pilot plants, costs are likely to be well above those of diesel and gasoline well into the 2030s.
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