German here… this is bullshit. Of course some people love combustion cars. But most people doesnt really care. Moste people care for price, safety, and functions.
Too bad for them?? We really love the sounds and looks of old steam trains but understand that they’re not the grandest for the environment so we prefer electric trains over all.
In my experience, the people who holds that view are also the people who are not going to buy a car anyway.
Once they do need a new car, they will try an electric and then they’ll change their mind.
Hard disagree. As a car person, it’s about the mechanical simplicity and feedback you get from the car.
Electronic steering and throttles already took a lot of the “road feel” from most modern cars. Fully electric cars compound the issue with awkward “engine noises” and fake gear shifts… none of that really translates how the car is actually performing on the road. Think of it like listening to music on headphones vs being there in concert, it’s about the feel of the experience. Every single electric car I’ve driven had had no soul, no feel. You’re so disconnected from the road grip feels like a total guess when you’re moving quickly. Paired with distracting “saftey features” that can’t properly read the road and screens galore most electric vehicles are obnoxious, distracting, and dull to drive.
Not to mention, If my car breaks down I can usually pull out some basic tools and spend a couple hours fixing it, because it’s mostly mechanical features. The majority of electric vehicles require proprietary software and tools to do very basic maintenance. Plus, any sort of aftermarket changes requires an incredible amount of electrical engineering practice to not totally brick the car.
TLDR: electric cars are dull and exceedingly difficult for average folks to repair easily. Mechanically minded folk want to feel connected to their car and electronic cars don’t give you that.
Fully electric cars compound the issue with awkward “engine noises” and fake gear shifts
What? No, they do not, unless you make it. But who the hell would pay such gimmicks?
Actually I disagree with everything you said.
Driving electric is much more pleasant and a more direct wheel to tarmac experience. I thought I would miss the feeling of tossing the car through the gears and roaring the engine around a corner, but I don’t. It’s a lot more satisfying to accelerate with a more linear torque increase that doesn’t make your head nod like doll everytime the engine hits the maximum revolutions in a gear. Getting pushed back into the seat is fun and enjoyable in all cars, but even more so when the tickling in your stomach doesn’t stop until you let go of the accelerator.
Electric cars have electric engines. The engine hardly ever breaks. The maintenance required on electric cars are the same as on cars with combustion engines, except that combustion engines have more parts that can break. Software vs hardware is also exactly the same. Modern cars with combustion engines have the same amount of crappy software errors as electric cars. None of it has anything to do with the engine.
The sound is different, sure. It doesn’t roar like a bear. Instead it hisses like a vicious cat.
I think this article should be assumed more at the lobby of the combustion car industry with their conservative stubbornness and less against the individual Germans.
It’s not just noise, and not just cars.
The sound of “fast” for me is a liquid cooled two stroke motorcycle engine. Imprinted on them in my teens. And the smell of “fast” is burned fully synthetic two stroke oil. It’s been thirty years and I still get a positive emotional reaction to hearing and smelling a “modern” two stroke engine running.
These days I drive a “boring” emissions compliant diesel (not a VW 😜) and ride a four stroke. But I deeply understand the emotional connection people have to the sensory experience of their vehicles. For me it’s freedom, excitement, speed, challenge.
I liken it to listening to your favorite band on headphones vs seeing them in concert. One experience is just hearing the song, the other you feel with your whole body.
But for everyday use, I would rather just listen to music on my headphones instead of constantly being at a concert :D
Germany is the European country with the highest percentage of people who rent homes instead of owning them.
Which automatically means we’re dependent on public charging infrastructure for our cars, which is woefully underdeveloped.
I would love to buy an electric car but it just doesn’t make any sense. There’s your real reason, dear French newspaper.
So pass a law that every rental property has to have a charger.
I agree that it is much better and more convenient to be able to charge your car at home with your own wallbox.
However, I do not believe that the current availability of charging stations in Germany is the main problem. There are many places where you can charge your car apart from petrol stations: supermarkets, hardware stores, restaurants, parking garages, at work. Yes, it takes a bit of time to get used to it, but it’s not really a problem in most places in Germany.
Source: owner of an electric car who rents a flat in Germany
petrol stations […] hardware stores, restaurants
None in my area have chargers. Some farther away do, but only up to 22kW, see below.
Supermarkets
They’ve got some chargers, but only up to 22kW, only while you’re shopping. I can’t shop groceries for multiple hours while my car charges.
parking garages
None nearby except the one at the supermarket. See above.
at work
My employer declined to buy into the chargers the industrial park put up, so I am not allowed to use them.
I frequently drive 150+ km a day for my job, so I’d need to be able to fully charge up two or three times a week depending on the car model, battery size and season. I either need slow charging in walking distance to my home or public fast chargers, otherwise it’s a non starter.
Well, it is a huge problem for me. Home office, so no charging at workplace. And the only charging stations around where I live (eastern part of Berlin) are slooooow charging stations, meaning I would have to plan for a 6-hour visit to the supermarket.
Quick charge stations are few and far between, and in use most of the time.
That doesn’t just take a bit of time getting used to, it’s simply not feasible.
On the charging map, I can see more than a dozen available fast charging stations (>=150 kW) in East Berlin. But I don’t know your exact situation and I believe you when you say it just doesn’t make sense for you.
From my experience, I can only say that I have never been in a situation where there was no fast charging option within 10 km when I needed it. I have also never encountered a situation where all the spaces at a charging station were occupied.
How many actually work. VWs network in Canada is unreliable.
I have driven about 30,000 km in my electric car and charged it at over 50 different charging stations in Germany, Switzerland, Italy and the Netherlands. So far, I have not had a single technical problem that prevented me from charging.
As a German, many of my countrymen and -women are rather embarassing.
On this front, Italians do not behave differently.
Germany has done a lot of good with green energy too, so it’s not all bad
Except for what they did with nuclear power.
Nein danke.
Unlike what France wants us to think, nuclear power is not green. Unless you count that warm and fuzzy green glow.
The main threat here is climate change. Nuclear plants are an excellent low CO2 alternative to traditional baseline power.
We can handle the waste. We can’t handle a 3c climate change bump.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository
You’re right about climate change. But for Germany, nuclear power is not the awnser.
- We don’t have a safe, final place to store the waste.
- We would again be dependend on other countrys, to import uranium.
- All nuclear power plants are offline and would take a lot of money to modernise / reopen them. To have a significant impact over all we would also need to build more. All of this will easily take more than 10 years.
For us, it is way more cost efficient, faster and safer to invest in solar, wind and battery’s.
All of this will easily take more than 10 years.
We’ve been listening to this bullshit for well over 10 years now.
Nuclear should always have been one of the tools and there would be much less fossil fuel being burnt now and for the next few decades.
The scale of importing uranium vs importing oil or coal is not remotely comparable. And anyway, you’re importing oil and gas now so that wasn’t a win.
And listening to Germany acting as if they can’t engineer some power plants is pathetic.
I live in Germany. I don’t understand the “no space” argument. Just buy a 1km x 1km farm plot in Bayern at one of the known stable rock locations and dig down. The space is there. The footprint is small. Look at the Onkalo site. The above ground footprint is even smaller.
This being said I think long term storage should be a EU level agenda modeled after the Finnish Onkalo model with shared locations.
Germany is already dependent on importing energy sources. So importing uranium ore from Canada is no different. Except we would import from an ally. Even solar which I support requires imports. Wind less so but even then our wind turbines are only partially domestic.
As far as reopening closed plants yah. You are right. I don’t think that is easy to reopen them after such neglect. The short term answer is to buy low CO2 power from France while Germany continues its renewable path. Aka nuclear base energy by proxy.
Also german here, neighbour to the proud bavarians. Haha „just buy“ and open a site in the kingdom of Markus and the CSU? There may be a Endlager in Germany, but never in Bavaria.
You can not just dig down anywhere. You need the right kind of rock and in a formation large enough that you can dig down and be sure, that no water can ever touch the nuclear waste and transport the nuclear material to the surface. That geology is pretty rarer.
The short term answer is to buy low CO2 power from France
The same France that constantly buys electricity from Germany because of constant issues with their nuclear powerplants?
I don’t understand the “no space” argument.
It’s not about the space it takes to store the waste. It needs to be stored safely for one million years for the radiation levels to be safe again. This timeframe is also required by law. It is very unlikely, that we will ever finds such place in Germany.
Using another countrys storage will most likely come at an even higher price, because they want to make a profit on it on top.Just buy a 1km x 1km farm plot in Bayern at one of the known stable rock locations and dig down.
See argument above. And: I live in Bavaria. And no thanks, even if it would be possible to store it here, we don’t want it. I guess no one wants a nuclear waste facility anywhere near his home and I fully understand it. That’s another kinda unsolvable problem.
Germany is already dependent on importing energy sources.
Yeah, but just because things are going that way right now doesn’t mean they always have to. Quite the contrary. The Russian war clearly showed us that dependencies like these should be completely reduced as fast as possible. Why be dependent on someone, if you don’t have to.
Even solar which I support requires imports. Wind less so but even then our wind turbines are only partially domestic.
Yes, some raw materials and some parts I would guess. This is the same with nuclear. But the difference starts by operating them. We don’t need a “fuel” for solar panals or wind turbines to work.
Except we can’t handle the waste. At least not in Germany where we move it between temporary storage locations until we find a permanent one soon™️ and are shocked that due to improper storage the containers are rusting.
Can you move a 3C temperature increase to a temporary storage location?
Mate, don’t ask me, ask those NIMBYs. For what it’s worth if the German state wants to rent the cellar below my flat I am fine with it.
Politically I agree it may be difficult.
We can handle the waste. We have built permanent locations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository
As for where we build locations I think a EU lead agenda modeled off the Onkalo approach would be best.
The second best would be for Germany to build its own long term storage facility under the same model at one of the several identified good locations.
It is still absolutely stupid to get rid of nuclear power before coal, I guess that’s what they’re talking about.
Our coal usage is at an all time low and continues to decline. In fact the decline in recent years is greater than the contribution of nuclear power has ever had to our energy mix (roughly 2% per year).
Let’s be honest here: The last nuclear plants in Germany (and most of the western world!) were build in the 70s and 80s. The last german nuclear plant was finished in 1989 and switched off in 2023 after 34 years. Every other reactor was even older. Even if other countries are running reactors that are old as fuck, that is not safe. So there was no way to keep them running into the 2030s or 2040s.
(and I know that other countries are running their old reactors and that is also not safe)
Those reactors get refurbished frequently. The site may be 34 years old but the reactors and cooling are newer.
No, they are not. What gets refurbished is everything in there (pipes, cables etc.), but you can’t replace the reactor vessel and containment.
How do you know that? Are you an expert on nuclear power technology? I at least see absolutely no reason why proper maintenance wouldn’t allow reactors to work infinitely. That’s kind of the definition of “proper maintenance”.
There are several reasons: Those reactors were planned for a runtime of 30-40 years. And you can’t prolong those runtimes by “proper maintenance” due to some hard facts introduced by the radioactivity. The steel in the containment & pressure vessel will get radiation damage with time. That is something you can monitor - but the pressure vessel is the reactor and if that is damaged, you can’t simply replace it. So there is a hard limit on runtime. You might get a few years more out of them, you might be lucky, but that really is not a safe way to run a reactor.
You can take a look at what that actually means when you look at France: They have build nearly all of their reactors between 1977 and 1994 and that means that most of their reactors have reached those 40 years they were designed for. France totally failed to start building replacement reactors - Flamanville III is not enough and was extremely expensive and way late. And they need to run those reactors - if there are problems with too many reactors, they have not enough capacity. We already saw that a while ago when too many of those old reactors developed cracks. So if there is a big issue, french politics need to ensure that there is enough electricity generation. And that political pressure is something that is not compatible with a safe way of running nuclear reactors, esp. when you’re running old reactors.
If every Nation capable switched to nuclear power in the 50s we wouldn’t be nearly as fucked as we are today.
Nuclear is insanely efficient and produces relatively little waste compared to the energy it produces.
Oil companies put a lot of money into making you believe its dirty and unsafe
I’m not sure that oil companies are behind the various near and actual catastrophes of nuclear power plants. At least that’s what convinced me that it’s not worth the risk.
If you take into account every nuclear related death and even include potential/indirect ones from radiation exposure (cancer) it’s still killed less people than just the physical extraction of fossil fuels. That’s not even getting into the potential/indirect deaths caused by the burning of the fuels/pollution.
Not to mention modern day reactors are incredibly safe. Thorium reactors are pretty cool
The propaganda around nuclear energy is insane
Sure, on paper those are incredibly safe compared to older models. However, our current economic system has no incentive to keep these reactors in a top-notch state. Instead, companies in order to maximize profit will reduce maintenance to the bare minimum of what’s necessary to pass whatever laughable security standards are imposed on them.
That is, if there are going to be frequent and thorough inspections at all. I.e. it is well-known here in Germany that due to tax evasion roughly 20 billion Euros are missing from the federal budget. I do not believe this is going to change anytime soon, and neither do I believe it will be much different if we build new reactors.
Nuclear was supposed to be a stopgap until renewables and battery storage can handle 24/7. Nuclear by far produces much less CO2 than coal or gas. That matter much more in the long run.
And guess what? That time is now. It’s just politics holding us back. The technology is here.
The glow isn’t green, though, but more blue or violet. Real life is not the Simpsons.
Nuclear power isn’t (and never was) about cheap and clean power generation, but about having and maintaining a knowledge, equipment, and personnel pool for the military application of nuclear power.
Even if you have no military nuclear programme, if you have a civilian one that is set up correctly, you are within months of building yourself a workable nuclear deterrent. Politicians should simply stop lying about its purpose and it would be fine. Especially in a time where Europe needs to think hard about becoming independent from a nuclear deterrent provided by an outside country.
There is a difference between operating a technology on a comercial scale and having the capabilities to build on it. The university I went to had a reactor in one of it’s cellars. Granted, tiny compared to a comercial plant but enough to do research with and train people on.
Yes enough for research and limited training. But it doesn’t produce people nor facilities capable of handling and working with nuclear technology at any appreciable scale. In order to credibly have the ability to build nukes within half a year, you need more than a few nuclear scientists and engineers, you need a sizable trained workforce and the relevant facilities for processing and handling nuclear fuels.
Yeah, I think we should rather stick to good old clean coal tbh. Nuclear is for the deranged.
Except usage of coal has been going down steadily and is at an all time low. The amount we use coal less is bigger than the amount of electricity nuclear has ever contributed to the German electricity mix.
Bad decisions of the past don’t make bad decisions of the present any less bad. Renewables are amazing and a must, but they’re just not enough.
Renewables aren’t enough but nuclear is not the solution. Emergency gas powerplants are the only economically sound way due to their flexibility.
The concept of “base load” will likely disappear within the next 20-30 years. And without a base load, nuclear powerplants are possibly even less economical than if you were to burn paper money to generate and sell electricity.
They are. Don’t let those fossil lobbyist tell you otherwise.
Nuclear is for the people who want to take the risk and don’t care about their neighbours they contaminate as well in case of a catastrophe.
Where do you think coal burning emissions go? They stay inside the lines of a map?
No, but they are no immediate thread to animals and people, unlike fallout.
Also, I love that everyone argues as if I was pro-coal. Fuck coal. But we don’t need nuclear, either.
Coal is for those who love radiation more than reactors do and don’t care about anything that breathes.
Yeah, that’s why it is being phased out, duh?
The article generalizes to a dangerous degree. It‘s really just an opinion piece. You can say the same thing about every single country. All you have to do is find one person who feels attached to combustion engines.
Except speaking as a petrolhead… the germans are historically really fucking good at it.
I dont think that in the history of the automobile if you were to ask “What was the best car of the year” that it wouldnt be a german dominated list every year. Yes the Japanese would occasionally sit them on their ass and the Americans and Italians might get one or two. But building world class cars has been a big part of the german identity globally for the past hundred years.
I think everyone is embarrassed by their fellow citizens
What ? Emotional connection to a car ? They are describing a phsycological problem.
BS, the vast majority of German drivers are frugal about spending money for fuel and prefer efficiency over power. There will always be the minority gearheads who will scream the loudest.
No offence intended but Duh. People who are passionate about something dont want it banned. I’m one of those people and yes we will push back because we all know most of the worlds polution is caused by big buisness and industry. When people talk about banning ALL combustion engines it reads to me like “recycling will save the environment”
Most of the worlds driving population doesnt give a fuck about driving enjoyment or feel any real passion for driving or cars. The enthusiasts and enthusiast cars arent the lions share of the problem. If the electric grocery getters were significantly cheaper the vast majority of people will adopt them. Id gladly only take my petrol engine out for special occasions if I could also afford an EV to get stuck in traffic in.
most of the worlds polution is caused by big buisness and industry.
There is definitely truth in this. But I also think it’s a dangerous attitude to perpetuate. Because blaming the majority offender can counterintuitively lead to an endless loop of passing responsibility along. Case in point when some people in relatively smaller countries argue that its not their responsibility to cut emissions because countries like China and India are the majority polluters. China and India can then point to developed countries having made more cumulative emissions over time. Eventually someone has to take a stand and make a change, even if the main impact is to initiate a cultural shift.
Oh agreed, just pointing out that when you throw around the idea of outright bans of course the people who are passionate will hate it, dig their heels in and call bullshit.
Governments need to leave the door open for the small number of petrolheads who are prepared to pay a premium to continue doing what they LOVE and use that premium to make EVs more practical and affordable for the vast majority of people who “Just need something to get me from A to B” to the point where even the diehards will say “It just doesnt make sense to drive this thing every day, Ill get an EV for a daily driver”
I doubt this is a majority speaking. A few people may be petrol heads and love the roaring sound of a v engine (or an underpowered r4 with a loud exhaust). Most Germans drive standard cars, where the manufacturer is trying to make the engine as writer and smooth as possible. Their real fear is that their electric car won’t take them the 1500km to their holiday destination, without any stops, with a caravan in tow, which they will do once per year.
Their real fear is that their electric car won’t take them the 1500km to their holiday destination, without any stops, with a caravan in tow, which they will do once per year.
Relevant (in German): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPEmnVdDoCo
Also, this dads-having-something-to-prove mentality of driving without breaks is illegal and reckless.
Their real fear is that their electric car won’t take them the 1500km to their holiday destination, without any stops, with a caravan in tow, which they will do once per year.
And they can do that with fast charging and there are enough fast chargers. This fear is going to go away, as friends and family members buy EVs. The sales numbers are pretty good and prices for EVs are falling, so this is probably going to happen in a lot of cases. Especially with “cheap” German branded EVs like the VW ID.Polo and new subsidies. Germany is past the early adopter phase for EVs and in the early mass market phase already.
A few people may be petrol heads and love the roaring sound of a v engine
old men, they will just die out.
It’s not “emotionally hard to accept” it’s financially hard to purchase.
While I would agree, many people really do hate the idea of electric cars for no other reason than nostalgia for combustion engines. But it’s changing.
There are definitely die-hard fans of combustion engine cars, but realistically, the majority would gladly switch if electric cars were affordable and the infrastructure was in place. However, EU imposed tariffs on Chinese electric cars while local manufacturers failed to provide accessible options.
There’s more than the polar facets of EV v ICE.
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Driving EVs feel sterile and unfun, the constant haptic feedback of the gentle purring of the IC engine is like a warm hug that helps folks relax. There’s a lot of bad around internal combustion but one of the biggest draws is how sitting in a car can feel comfortable. It helps children and the tired fall asleep.
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EVs feel like the techbro solution to mobility, the dry and single serving purpose of “cleanly move the thing” without understanding the little parts of the experience that are really inviting.
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EVs also don’t have a lot of feedback when driving like a manual transmission. There is no thrill. No opportunity to thrill unless you subscribed to a service package. Fun is gated so you only get a boring transport experience.
There’s a lot of reasons that EVs aren’t appealing to a generation that can compare the old and new.
Driving EVs feel sterile and unfun, the constant haptic feedback of the gentle purring of the IC engine is like a warm hug that helps folks relax. There’s a lot of bad around internal combustion but one of the biggest draws is how sitting in a car can feel comfortable. It helps children and the tired fall asleep.
WTF. Also helps drivers fall asleep.
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I know plenty people that are buying new cars (not cheap ones) and are deliberately not going electric. It is not about the money for some people…
Muh big machine vroom vroom. Some people are so dumb 🤦🏻
Our electric car is currently in the shop and we got a IC one as a replacement. I can’t even express how much it annoys me to feel the car shift (at least its an automatic) and make noise when I accelerate. And that’s a quality car, so it’s muffled already.
after riding in an electric car, every IC engine sounds like a tractor
And even the high quality ones overall feel so clumsy and rattling
We really get spoiled in our EVs, ngl.
Every time I drive: “Why can’t my car be more quiet?”
Me, constantly, about everything: “Why can’t it all be more quiet?”
BEV sales in France are 20% of cars sold and in Germany it is 19.1% in 2025. So it is pretty similar, but Germany has had much faster growth recently, so it is very possible that this is going to change this year.
It‘s almost as if this heavily generalizing portrayal of Germans through a French lens is rather… emotional. Heh.
It’s a genre in France. Lazy stereotypes about Germans. I think Germans have many lazy stereotypes about Brazilians. Passing it on :)
I have never heard a fellow German talk about Brazil other than football to be honest. I guess that‘s a stereotype too but the reality is that Brazil isn‘t really in the general consciousness.
What would Europe be without French/German love-hate relationship.
with fuel at €1.72–€1.74/L, EVs make more sense than the cheap gas sold in North America. But, as EV fleet numbers increase, petrol prices will increase because of less volume sold and petrol stations will be rarer. Petrol drivers will start getting range anxiety.
That is going to take years. Petrol stations already have the infrastructure and mostly make their money from the small store and not selling petrol. Germany and most of Europe are densly populated, so refineries shutting down, is not going to cause that much of a logistics problem either. Sweden and Finland might see that happen though, due to being less densly populated.
It would require a massive drop in ICE cars on the road to increase petrol prices in a country like Germany. I very much doubt it is going to happen in the coming decade.
German newspaper: french eat frog.
