So a few years back germany introduced the Schuldenbremse (debt brake), the constitutional law that forbids them from accruing debt because all of germany thinks national finances work the same as personal finances
With a recent judgement by the constitutional court that said the "well this is debt but it doesn't count" climate fund is, actually, debt, and therefore unconstituational, the federal budget is considered unconstituational and has to be redone, without debt, so a lot less money to go around. Sure, constitutional orders are often ignored but this is big boy adult financism so we gotta make a new one
As such, the 4500€ (~$4900 at the time of writing) subsidy for buying a factory new EV car has been spontaneously canceled on the basis of there is no money to be spent for it unless we stop actually being a state (YMMV on whether or not that might happen to subsidize cars more) and the hitler particle detector of the expastered petite bourgeoisie who thinks they keep the country running via taxes has now exploded as they're all very, very, very, very mad about having bought a new car they can't actually afford without the subsidy and are now stuck paying for it anyways because they signed a contract assuming they'd get the subsidy
A lot of people finding out the german states raison d'etre is actually selling cars, which is entirely unhampered by this decision on the basis of the contracts are already signed and the state will be more than happy to enforce them on behalf of car makers, to which I say; lol, lmao, you fucking bozos
And everyone knows that you should never ever ever accrue debt in your personal finances, because long-term low-interest loans in exchange for capital good production is bad, bad, bad!
Eliminating subsidies for new vehicle construction is... imho... not necessarily a bad thing. The grounds for the cancellation are dumb. And the German political system seems to be doing everything to back itself into a corner wrt fossil fuels - by gutting nuclear and falling back on coal, clinging to automotive infrastructure, and still trying to be an export oriented economy. But if the end result of all this is for the German government to neuter its ability to spend money then maybe this policy is a moot point. They're going to degrowth themselves and that will functionally undercut their ability to emit over the long term.
The cost of gasoline is only going up. The cost of steel is only going up. The ability for Europeans to buy and maintain their car fleets is going down.. This isn't just a European problem, either.
They're still building too many, but if they want to kick the corner of the automotive industry with the best chance of growth in the balls... Maybe that's good.
No it's absolutely great actually, there`s 0 reason to send even more money directly to car manufacturers and that's all this shit ever does
It's just about not paying out. The subsidy would've gone to the consumers, not the car manufacturers - they get their money from the contracts people signed thinking they'd get the subsidy anyways. But you can only get the subsidy after registering the car, and seeing as it has been cancelled yesterday spontaneously, unless you're lucky and your municipality has already taken the step to offer the online form for it, you couldn't actually do that since all responsible municipal bureas for car registration are closed on weekends.
Which, again: lol, lmao
EDIT: Just as a side note as per the online form for car registration: you register it with a federal bureau. In the analogue world your documents however would get checked and the entry done by your municipality or county. The online form however is NOT provided by the federal bureau to it's citizens, but instead has to be provided by the responsible municipality or county, of which there are around 600. All this to send some data directly to a federal bureau. But since this country is living perpetual 1990 and computers aren't a thing, about 2/3rds of responsible municipalities and countys will have their access to the online form cut due in the next few days on account of not following and getting audited on the required IT-Security Guidelines.
Is this the German Efficiency I've been hearing so much about?