BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - As of this Friday, only private individuals will be able to apply for a government claim for the purchase of an electric car - the environmental bonus. The German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) sees this as a threat to the further market ramp-up of electric mobility. "The abolition of the environmental bonus for commercially used passenger cars will have a negative effect on their registrations and thus on the electric passenger car market as a whole," VDA President Hildegard Müller told Deutsche Presse-Agentur. "Commercial passenger cars will be excluded from the environmental bonus, even though the switch to electromobility is needed in all fleets."

With the environmental bonus, the state requires the purchase of an e-car. From Sept. 1, 2023, only private individuals who purchase an electric vehicle for exclusively private purposes will be eligible to apply, according to the responsible Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (Bafa). This was preceded by a decision of the traffic light coalition. The federal government had also already lowered the state requirement at the beginning of the year. Subsidies for plug-in hybrid vehicles with combined internal combustion and electric engines expired at the end of 2022.

Before commercial customers could no longer apply for the environmental bonus, applications increased significantly. According to Bafa data, the number of applications in July rose by around two-thirds compared with the previous month.

VDA President Müller said it was company cars and other commercially used passenger cars in particular that had been able to make a major contribution to the switch to electromobility and which subsequently came onto the used car market at more favorable prices. "They therefore make a very decisive contribution to a more climate-friendly passenger car fleet overall, as well as to achieving the climate targets." In addition, he said, the new regulation is a burden on small and medium-sized businesses and logistics companies. "It is now crucial to boost people's confidence in electromobility in other ways: The public charging infrastructure must be expanded even more consistently and the power grids must be made fit for the future."

Criticism also came from the German Confederation of Skilled Crafts. Secretary General Holger Schwannecke had said that the environmental bonus had so far successfully flanked the modernization of company fleets and the switch to alternative drive systems and made possible the sometimes very costly investments. "The fact that this proven instrument is now being phased out without replacement is incomprehensible in view of both the demand and the climate policy objectives." He added that the price differences between conventional and alternative drive systems were still very high, particularly in the case of passenger cars and commercial vehicles used for commercial purposes. "The fact that the environmental bonus is now to be phased out in the commercial sector now threatens to put the brakes on the only just beginning ramp-up of electromobility in the skilled trades and SMEs."/hoe/DP/mis