The German cabinet has backed a bill designed to stimulate demand for electronic vehicles by enabling municipalities to offer EV owners incentives such as free parking, and the use of bus lanes, as reported by Businessweek.
As a world leader in car manufacturing, the bill simultaneously aims to stimulate the sluggish sales of EVs in Germany while also working towards climate-protection targets of reducing greenhouse gases. Germany has reaffirmed its goal (set in 2009) is to have 1 million EVs on the road by 2020, which is ambitious considering only 21,000 EVs were recorded at the beginning of 2014. German automakers will offer 17 different EV models by the end of 2014, with another 12 models slated for release next year. Hybrid vehicles meeting CO2 emission standards (<50mg/km) will also qualify for the proposed incentives.
It will be interesting to see how the municipalities will be incentivised to adopt the proposed scheme, because as we all know…there’s really no such thing as “free parking”. Someone will pay, but the details of the plans’ execution haven’t been released as yet.