Germany is considering a €5,500 consumer incentive for electric and hybrid vehicles, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced last Friday.
The southern state of Bavaria, where BMW has its headquarters, “is very much in favour of the buyer’s premium,” said Horst Seehofer, head of the Christian Social Union, one of Merkel’s coalition partners. Almost a year ago, Jalopnik reported that BMW could phase out production of internal combustion engines by 2022.
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“Germany has set itself a goal of bringing one million electric cars onto its roads by 2020, but has so far made little progress in encouraging drivers to switch from more-polluting—but also generally cheaper—diesel and petrol vehicles,” Reuters reports. “Calls for supporting electric cars have grown since the Volkswagen emissions scandal erupted last year.”
