How Germany becomes fit for e-mobility
Since the beginning of the year, it has been clear where the journey is heading: From 2035, new cars fired with fossil fuels such as gasoline or diesel may no longer be sold in Europe, according to the EU. The signals from the automotive industry clearly point to the battery-electric drive as the prevailing solution, and the backdoor for e-fuels anchored in the EU law is unlikely to change this much. In the passenger car and truck sectors, the electric drive is considered the cheapest and most climate-friendly alternative to liquid fuels, as the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI recently explained in a position paper.
Even before the EU decision, which means the end of fossil combustion engines in Europe, some car manufacturers had sealed their farewell to gasoline and diesel – in some cases even well before the EU deadline – and announced that they would invest a large part of their resources in research and development of new models exclusively in e-mobility. An incomplete list of the manufacturers' plans for Europe:
- Polestar, Smart and Tesla are already purely electric.
- Opel wants to sell only electric cars as early as 2028, and Citroën is pursuing similar plans.
- From 2030, Fiat, Ford, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, Mini, Peugeot and Volvo, among others, want to be purely electric in Europe.
- From 2026, Audi will only add new models that are electrified to its portfolio. The Ingolstadt-based company plans to sell its last combustion engine in 2033. Volkswagen has also dated its farewell to the combustion engine to 2033 at the latest.
However, a lot still has to happen for Germany to become fit for e-mobility and for the plans of the pioneers and the EU's targets to be realised by 2035. After all, there are still a good twelve years left for this – that should be enough if the right course is set now. But what are the biggest construction sites of the drive turnaround?
In the following, we present the current situation of five core areas where there is still a lot to do or where we are already on the right track, and outline solutions that should eliminate the remaining problems and teething problems.
1. Construction site: The charging infrastructure
Germany currently has around 85,000 publicly accessible charging points, a good fifth of which are fast-charging stations. The majority of e-car drivers are satisfied with this offer: According to a survey by the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW), only five percent of e-drivers see charging over long distances as a problem, while 18 percent worry before starting their journey that the public charging station they have found could be occupied.
According to the German government's plan, 15 million e-cars are to be registered in Germany as early as 2030. At the moment, there are just over a million. In line with the targeted growth in the e-car population, the federal government is pursuing the goal of building one million public charging points for electric cars by 2030. In recent months, however, voices from politics, industry and the energy sector have been accumulating that the million-euro target for the public charging infrastructure is too high. It is based on a study from 2020 that sheds light on several scenarios.
The scenario on which the million-euro target is based assumes that public charging will account for a share of 40 percent. In another scenario, which corresponds most closely to current user behavior, the share of public charging is only 15 percent. According to this calculation, 360,000 public charging points would be sufficient by 2030. The million-euro scenario had underestimated the relevance of private charging, for example for e-drivers at home, at work sites and in customer parking lots. Here, industry experts also see the far greater potential for expanding the charging infrastructure to increase the acceptance of e-mobility – after all, it is very convenient to be able to charge your e-car while you are sleeping, working or shopping anyway.
It is assumed that there are currently about ten wallboxes in the non-public area for every public charging point. The "million target" has therefore already been almost reached in the private sector. The biggest concern at the moment is the expansion in urban areas for the classic "lantern parker", who does not have the opportunity to install his own wallbox. And especially in large cities, the few public charging facilities are often in high demand. Here, charging at the workplace or in customer parking lots would be an alternative.
The target image for a nationwide and reliable charging infrastructure is considered a "moving target" in the industry, as it is difficult to predict the development of the most important parameters – such as the actual sales figures of e-cars, the expansion of charging infrastructure in the private sector, technological leaps in the range of the vehicles and charging speeds.
Autoindustrie und Politik sind wie eingangs erwähnt überzeugt, dass dem E-Auto bei der Pkw-Mobilität die Zukunft gehört. Dementsprechend werden viele verschiedene Maßnahmen eingeleitet beziehungsweise schon umgesetzt, damit die Grundlage zum Gelingen der E-Mobilität – die Ladeinfrastruktur – dem Bedarf entspricht. Da dies (entgegen so mancher Stammtischweisheit) der weiter oben erwähnten Umfrage und dem tatsächlichen Nutzungsverhalten nach bereits weitestgehend gegeben ist, darf davon ausgegangen werden, dass der Begriff Reichweitenangst bald ausgedient hat.
As mentioned at the beginning, the automotive industry and politicians are convinced that the future belongs to the e-car in passenger car mobility. Accordingly, many different measures are being initiated or already implemented to ensure that the basis for the success of e-mobility – the charging infrastructure – meets demand. Since this is already largely the case (contrary to some regulars' wisdom) according to the survey mentioned above and the actual usage behavior, it can be assumed that the term range anxiety will soon be obsolete.
2. Construction site: The expansion of renewable energies
Dozens of studies agree that e-cars are by far the most climate-friendly type of car mobility. Although high CO2 emissions are generated during the energy-intensive production of batteries, e-cars make up for this disadvantage with every kilometer driven. Electric cars show their climate advantage most quickly the higher the share of renewable energies in the charging current, as an analysis by the Austrian research company Joanneum Research from 2022 showed - in the best case after 25,000 kilometers.
According to the German government's plans, the share of renewable energies in gross electricity consumption is to increase to at least 80 percent by 2030, compared to 46.2 percent in 2022. This is to be achieved primarily through an accelerated expansion of wind and solar energy. A positive side effect is that Germany can also reduce its dependence on imports of fossil fuels.
To ensure that the energy and thus also the drive turnaround succeeds, the Bundestag passed the largest energy policy amendment in decades in July 2022: the new EEG 2023, also known as the Easter Package, which for the first time gives legal priority to the expansion of renewable energies over other projects already in the planning processes, keyword: Germany Tempo. The legislative package consists of a whole package of measures. Municipalities and citizen energy companies, for example, are to be given a better share of the yield of wind, solar or biomass plants, and there are to be higher remuneration for solar power from roofs. In addition, it is planned to bring forward the coal phase-out from 2038 to 2030.
Since the restructuring of the energy supply is associated with enormous costs, the federal government has launched a billion-dollar funding program. Between 2023 and 2026 alone, a good 177.5 billion euros are to be made available for our environmentally friendly, reliable and affordable energy supply as well as for climate protection. The fund set up for this purpose is fed by revenues from European emissions trading and CO2 pricing for fossil fuels, among other things. Since the CO2 price is expected to rise steadily over the years, gasoline and diesel will also become more expensive in the future. Another argument for not postponing the switch to an e-car if you are about to buy a car anyway.
3. Construction site: The batteries
Batteries are a key sticking point for the success of electromobility. The energy storage system installed in the underbody accounts for a good third of the purchase price of an electric car. Currently, Germany and Europe are dependent on imports, primarily from China, where a good 75 percent of global production capacities are concentrated. In addition to the battery industry, car manufacturers are also setting up their own production of battery cells, including Volkswagen, Porsche or Stellantis together with Mercedes-Benz. But the next dependencies are already looming: in raw materials. The gas shortage triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine has made us vividly aware of what such dependence can lead to.
The EU is also highly dependent on imports of raw materials for battery materials: 87 percent of raw lithium imports come from Australia, 80 percent of manganese imports from South Africa and Gabon, 68 percent of raw cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo and 40 percent of imports of natural crude graphite from China.
At the same time, the production of battery cells in Europe is to be massively expanded: from 44 gigawatt hours (GWh) in 2020 to 1,200 GWh by 2030. That would be enough to equip about 20 million electric cars with batteries, about twice as much as the entire annual sales of new cars within Europe.
Europe also has some raw material deposits of its own, but it would take at least 12 to 16 years to develop them. Another risk is that current supply contracts usually only cover the supply of raw materials for production for the next two or three years. At present, many efforts are being made in politics and industry to ensure that the imbalance does not worsen further and that the supply of batteries for the ramp-up of e-mobility is secured. The raw material situation is currently the biggest factor of uncertainty in terms of electromobility.
From a technological point of view, two compositions dominate today: lithium iron phosphate (LFP), which enables cheaper, more reliable and safer batteries, and nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC), which offers a longer range and better performance data for the same volume, but costs a little more. They are likely to remain the dominant technologies until the end of the decade.
In the future, the two technologies are likely to be replaced by solid-state batteries, which are considered a hot candidate for the battery of the future. It could eliminate almost all previous weak points of batteries. Batteries would then be more compact and lighter or would allow significantly more range with the same installation space, more than 1,000 kilometers are targeted. Charging times would be massively shortened, and solid-state batteries would also be virtually non-flammable.
So it is hardly surprising that practically the entire car and battery industry has set its sights on the solid-state battery and is investing large sums in the further development of the technology. But it will take a few more years before the solid-state battery is affordable and ready for series production. The first models are expected towards the end of the decade.
4. Construction site: Prices and availability of new e-cars
Probably the biggest hurdles for end customers at the moment are the prices as well as the availability or sometimes quite long delivery times of new electric cars. The waiting times from order to delivery are sometimes well over a year for some manufacturers. Some potential e-drivers hesitate to buy an e-car because they fear that, in the worst case, they will order a model that has been overhauled by newly released models at the time of delivery, both technically and in terms of price-performance ratio.
Precisely because e-cars are more expensive to purchase compared to gasoline and diesel cars, many buyers think twice about whether it should be an e-car or not. Private buyers can save several thousand euros thanks to the e-car subsidy. But if you only look at the purchase price, you do the math without the follow-up costs. And here the e-car is clearly ahead. Electric cars require less repair and maintenance than combustion engines; those who charge cleverly drive cheaper with electricity than with fossil fuel; and e-cars are also exempt from motor vehicle tax – which has recently become significantly more expensive for combustion engines. It is therefore worthwhile to look at the maintenance costs for e-cars over a longer period of time.
As is the case with the CO2 backpack, it can be briefly stated that the longer you drive an electric car, the cheaper it is compared to the combustion engine. Especially since gasoline and diesel are likely to become significantly more expensive over the years due to the ever-higher CO2 price, while charging e-cars will become cheaper in the future: Thanks to flexible electricity prices, the regulatory basis of which is currently being developed by the government, savings in traction current of several hundred euros per year beckon.
And there are several ways to avoid the delivery problem: Either you simply don't care that the dream car is only in the garage after 18 months. Or you can consciously and pragmatically decide on a model from a manufacturer that can deliver quickly. Currently, these are MG and Tesla, for example, and VW's ID models are now also available earlier again. Alternatively, you can also look around at used electric cars - then it only takes a few days in the best case until the electric car is in the garage.
5. Construction site: Our horizon
In many discussions about electromobility, it quickly becomes clear where one of the biggest challenges lies: in our heads. Hand on heart, it can't really matter to you personally whether you cover the 40 kilometers a day that the average German driver covers with a car with a combustion engine or an e-car. Our planet is not indifferent, as it makes it unmistakably clear with rising temperatures and more frequent extreme events.
And anyone who has ever experienced the calmness, power and suppleness of an electric car, combined with the pleasant feeling of doing something for the climate, may never want to go back to the combustion engine. In surveys, almost 100 percent of all long-term e-car drivers say that they do not mourn the loss of the combustion engine.
Many examples show that e-mobility is absolutely suitable for everyday use for most drivers. In Norway, electric cars already account for more than half of all new registrations. E-mobility has arrived in the middle of society and is no longer just a crazy thing for eco-freaks. It is our future and that of our children and children's children. Broadening your horizons to realize that doesn't hurt. A planet that has come apart at the seams, however, does.