Robert Habeck is probably the smartest politician in the federal government.
He justifies the planned expiry of the subsidy for cars that can be charged at the socket with a combination of electric motor and combustion engine, the plug-in hybrids, not with doubts about their contribution to climate protection, but with economic knowledge.
The vehicle category has established itself on the market and therefore does not require any further state start-up aid from taxpayers' money, argues the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs.
That's smart, it sounds unassailable, but the truth lies a little deeper.
Plug-in hybrids get people used to electric driving, and with the internal combustion engine as a reassurance, they take the worry out of travel.
They offer the best of both worlds.
The fact that masses of unused charging cables are said to be discovered in returned leased vehicles is cited as an argument against the hybrid, but that should be welcome propaganda.
If you have a cable hanging from your home wall charging station, you can charge with it and not with the one in the trunk, which is more difficult to access.
More serious is the allegation that two engines on board lead to more weight and inefficiency.
That's right, the consumption of a plug-in hybrid driven solely with an electric motor is shockingly high.
The real values are far above the Normana specifications.
The state proves to be an unreliable fellow here
Anyone who weighs the disadvantages against the advantages of electric and thus locally emission-free driving in commuter traffic can come to the conclusion that the subsidy is misguided here.
Since the market distortion is obvious, as is always the case when subsidies are granted, the decision to phase them out at the end of the year can only be classified as correct.
Of course, anyone who has already ordered their expensive car and only gets it delivered after the turn of the year looks down the drain, because the subsidy is tied to the delivery date.
With delivery times currently taking up to a year and a half due to supply chain issues, buyers are being deprived of the subsidy they were entitled to trust.
The state proves to be an unreliable fellow here.
And also as inconsistent.
Because with the realization of the plug-in hybrids, the conviction should have matured that the subsidy for purely electric cars should also be canceled immediately.
This is not politically wanted, governments in Berlin, France or Brussels are willingly and against their better knowledge being taken in by the arguments of the car opponents, who are pursuing much more far-reaching goals, that the electric car is climate-neutral.
It's not at all, because of its production with above-average CO2 emissions, because of the questionable consumption of resources and because of the power generation.
There is no answer here, neither oil nor coal nor nuclear power with their unresolved final storage are sustainable.
Nevertheless, incorrect representations are not corrected or only rarely corrected.
An organization has just claimed that the average consumption of an electric car is currently 15 kWh.
This is possibly the average of the standard specifications, the real consumption is significantly higher, as with plug-in hybrids and with the combustion engine that has been denounced for this reason.
Loss of charge must be taken into account, as well as weather influences and everyday life on the road.
This results in actual consumption of between 20 and 30 kWh, depending on the type of vehicle.
And only if no one drives faster than 120 km/h on the freeway.
Anyone who opens their eyes to this as well as to the beautiful sides of the electric car, ranging from local zero emissions and low noise to full draft, can only come to the conclusion that
stop the subsidy immediately and use the money in a more sensible place.
The apparently decided step to reduce the subsidy over the coming years is only half-hearted.
Bets are still being accepted as to whether Habeck would also say here that the electric car has established itself on the market.
Or whether he and many of his colleagues in government responsibility would then have to admit that with its current limited capacity and the dissuasively high costs, it can only be enforced politically, but has not yet been accepted by the general public.
If you want to keep individual mobility for everyone, you need different answers in the short term and an openness to technology in the long term that gives engineers the freedom to develop really viable solutions in the face of competitive pressure.
You can do it, more than a hundred years of continuous progress in automobile manufacture are the convincing proof.