The German Economy minister visited many companies, including BMW to promote a faster electrification
The automaker hopes to receive monetary help to speed up the process
Germany is currently behind its targets in terms of sustainability
The German government wants to accelerate its efforts towards sustainability in order to reach its goals. To do so, the economy minister went on a spree of visits to large companies.
One company to be visited was BMW. The automaker has already announced its plans for electrification, which call for more electric vehicles, but continued sales of gasoline powered cars past 2030.
Germany hopes to convince BMW to focus more on electric vehicles in order to help with its emission targets, which the country will miss if things don’t change.
The largest economy in Europe wants to become climate neutral by 2045, which it can only achieve if its industry shifts to making sustainable products.
BMW and other automakers hope to receive more government funding in order to make it possible to develop products and a strategy in a shorter timeframe than expected. This is even more important considering that the European Union has already proposed a ban on sales of new cars powered by fossil fuels starting in 2035.
To achieve its goal of having 15 million electric vehicles on German roads by 2030, the government plans to have 1 million public chargers by then, most of which should be fast chargers.
As of now, only 670,000 electric vehicles are registered in Germany, which is only about 1% of the total fleet, and there are only about 50,000 charging stations, of which 7,700 are fast chargers.