Germany’s new EV program saw nearly 2,000 applicants in its first monthh, 1/3 for BMW

As it was reported in the first few week of the new electric vehicle discount program in Germany, the scheme is spurring sales for BMW’s electric vehicle offering, mainly the BMW i3. We now have the statistics for the first full month of the program and it confirms the previous reports.

As previously discussed, the program is financed by both the state and the local auto industry, and it offers a €4,000 discount at the purchase of an all-electric vehicle and €3,000 for a plug-in hybrid. It is also capped to electric vehicles with a starting price of less than €60,000, which leaves Tesla out of the program, something the Californian automaker claims the German auto industry wanted in order to accept to help finance the new incentives.

AutoNews reached out to the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control (BAFA) to get a breakdown of the applications for the discount in its first month.

1,791 buyers applied for the program, 1,194 requests were for all-electric vehicles (BEVs) and 597 requests for plug-in hybrids (PHEVs). The split is encouraging for all-electric vehicles, but it could rapidly change after the first few months of the program since there are a lot more PHEV models available on the German auto market than there are BEVs.

BAFA said that the top three automakers to have their vehicles discounted were BMW with 581 applications, Renault with 444 applications, and Volkswagen with 154 applications.

It’s only the first month of the program, which expires at the end of June 2019. Hopefully, we should see it evolve to cover long-range electric vehicles as the entry price for such vehicles decreases over time, which will be essential for the program to really help the country’s goal to increase the number of EVs on the road. Germany has an EV fleet of about 50,000 plug-in vehicles on a total fleet of 45 million cars.