BERLIN: Germans are mad about cars and Germany is ranked the most fuel-efficient country on the planet, but when it comes to electric vehicles, Europe's top economy is in the slow lane.
And moves by the government last week to try to jump-start public interest in the technology are unlikely to change much, experts say.
In 2009, Chancellor Angela Merkel set an ambitious target for one million electric cars to be on the road in Germany by 2020, and this in a country where some motorways are free of any speed limit.
"We're confident that we'll reach that goal," Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt said as recently as last week when he launched a number of new electromobility initiatives.
But for Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, expert at the CAR Center for Automotive Research at Duisburg-Essen University, the target was totally unrealistic.
Merkel "might have just as easily said that we would have 100,000 cars driving on the moon by 2020," he said.
According to CAR data, about 16,900 electric cars were in use in Germany in the first half of 2014, or four cars for every 10,000 standard fuel-driven ones.
As a comparison, the ratio in France is 10 electric cars for every 10,000.
Electric cars are already exempt from road tax for a period of 10 years, but that appears to have provided little incentive so far, so the government unveiled new draft legislation last week aimed at giving the sector a boost.
Under the initiatives, electric cars would be allowed to use inner-city bus lanes. They would also be able to park free of charge, and parking spaces close to recharging stations would be reserved exclusively for electric cars.
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