Federal environment agency calls upgrade of diesel cars into question

August 27, 2017

The federal minister for the environment, Barbara Hendricks of the SPD, has repeatedly called on German automobile manufacturers to abandon their resistance to the expensive upgrade of diesel cars. In the context of the emissions scandal, Hendricks constantly pointed out that it was surely also in the interests of the sector – so important for the German economy – to regain the trust of customers all over the world by reducing harmful emissions. Now an investigation by the federal environmental agency is calling her strategy into question.

Read more: Germany’s dirty diesel cars en route for Eastern Europe

Will a driving ban be needed after all?

According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS), the paper written by the agency states that even upgrading “a significant proportion” of cars would barely reduce the concentration of nitrogen dioxide in cities. The report says that this would still be true even if the best possible calculations were applied, i.e., if fitting an improved exhaust gas cleaner meant car manufacturers succeeded in lowering nitric oxide emissions in older cars by 70 percent. Permissible limits would still be exceeded in some places over the coming years.

Read more: Can clean synthetic diesel fuels succeed?

Barbara Hendricks

Federal Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks

And then there’s the cost…

The federal environment agency also reaches “a devastating conclusion” about the expected cost, writes the FAS: Manufacturers would need to invest 3.7 billion euros in order to upgrade a sufficient quantity of cars.

The paper was apparently written after a technical discussion within the agency in June of last year, which was attended by representatives of the car industry, members of the state governments, and employees of the Technical Control Board (TÜV).

Hardware modifications

In the debate about pollution by diesel cars, Hendricks also demanded improvements to engine hardware. At a diesel summit in early August, which brought together representatives from the federal and state governments and from the automobile industry, manufacturers only agreed to software updates for more than 5 million diesel cars classified as meeting Euro 5 and 6 emissions standards, and to scrapping incentive schemes. The minister considers this inadequate. She is still hoping for the second diesel summit in the autumn with Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Read more: Dieselgate forces German carmakers to rethink their future

Federal Minister of Transport Alexander Dobrindt from the CSU has criticized his SPD Cabinet colleague. First they should wait and see what was achieved by the measures already agreed, Dobrindt said, positioning himself as the protector of the auto industry. But the Hamburg-based news magazine Der Spiegel reports that even within his ministry there are now concrete plans for the technical modification of diesel cars.

SC/cl (FAS, afp, rtr, Spiegel)

Germans and their cars

Mobility made in Germany

The reputation of Germany’s famed carmakers may have taken a hit, but their sales still soar. Yet German brands make up less than two-thirds of all cars on German roads, which is still a male-dominated territory: Only one-third of all owners in 2017 were women. Interestingly, that number has virtually not changed over the past decade.

Germans and their cars

A decade on the road

German passenger vehicles, are growing steadily older, from 8.1 years a decade ago to 9.3 years in 2017, the highest-ever age. By the way: By no means is Germany the car capital of the world: It ranks 20th in motor vehicles per capita – 17 spots behind the US, where every 10 people own eight cars. The world’s least motorized country? Togo.

Germans and their cars

Land of the vintage automobile

Roughly 600,000 vehicles – 13 percent of all cars on German roads – are considered vintage cars which means they are more than three decades old. 380,000 have a historic license plate, which requires the vehicle to be in “contemporary, original preservable condition.”

Germans and their cars

Steady motorization

As of January 1, 2017, 45.8 million passenger vehicles were registered in Germany. Based on a population of 82.8 million, it translates to 684 cars per 1,000 people. Today, there are five times as many cars in Germany than there were half a century ago when roughly 9 million vehicles drove on the “Autobahn.”

Germans and their cars

BMW country is king

The average passenger vehicle age in Germany varies from state to state. Maybe not surprisingly, cars in Bavaria, the home of BMW and the state with the highest economic per capita output, are the youngest at nine years, while the average vehicle on Brandenburg’s roads, the state surrounding Berlin, is almost a decade old.

Germans and their cars

Germany lags behind

While the number of gasoline-powered cars have remained remarkably stable over the past decade, their share steadily decreased to two-thirds of all engines in 2017. The number of diesel cars has risen from 10 to 15 million since 2008. Electric and hybrid cars combined made up 200,000 of all 45 million – that’s 0.5 percent. In Norway, the share of electric vehicles alone is more than 1 percent.

Author: Benjamin Bathke